Reviews with content warning for Suicidal thoughts - Severance

Reviews tagging 'Suicidal thoughts'

bluejayreads's review

challenging dark slow-paced

Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I barely skimmed the back cover before picking this up. I’m trying to read more broadly. I don’t think I’ve ever read a satire, it’s by a Chinese author featuring a Chinese protagonist, and looked to be satirizing the meaninglessness of modern work culture (relatable) and post-apocalyptic fiction (I’ve read a lot, could be interesting).

This was published in 2018, but I had to check. I think it was supposed to be satire of the modern millennial life in NYC or the post-apocalyptic genre or both. In 2018, maybe it was. But in February 2022, nearly two years into a deadly global pandemic that varies only slightly from the “epidemic” of the book, Severance isn’t satire – it’s prophetic.

This book is told out of order, altering back and forth between Before and After. Before and After what isn’t obvious in the book, but it’s clear to me. I can’t pinpoint a particular event or moment, but my life has definitely divided into Before Covid and After Covid. “It seemed to happen gradually, then suddenly,” as Candace says. Candace keeps going into work as everything slowly crumbles, keeps trying to do her job even though there’s less and less job to do, until suddenly it’s After and things are completely different.

I am not going to talk about the After timeline. I am not prepared to touch those emotions right now.

I didn’t think I had much if any of that “collective pandemic trauma” people talk about. Then I read Severance, and it turns out I do. When Candace’s job started requiring N95 masks, I felt a sinking familiarity. When a character first said the phrase “these uncertain times,” it felt like a punch in the gut. This book pulls on the trauma of living through a pandemic and the horror of surviving an apocalypse and combines them into something vividly repulsive and hideously possible. It evokes the visceral terror of being in a place usually full of people and discovering you are alone; the agonizing helpless realization that even if you survive this, there is no future; the despair of knowing that even if the world is ending, the only thing you can do is get up and go to work.

I read this as an audiobook at work, my mind lost in the horror and despair of this barely-fictional world while my hands, nearly independent of the rest of me, did my job. Scan the box. Open the box. Take out the bag. Label the bag. Put the bag in a new box. Label the new box. I repeat the same process over and over again, just like the epidemic victims in the book. I think that’s what Severance is supposed to be satirizing.

If there is an apocalypse, it won’t be like any of my post-apocalyptic novels. If it’s like any work of fiction, it will be like this. And if that’s the case, I don’t think I want to survive. I took several books off my to-read list. I have no more desire to read any post-apocalypses. I am too afraid of surviving the end of the world.

I’ve never legitimately described a book as life-changing before, but Severance is. I feel like I’ve just realized the world is about to end and can’t understand everyone continuing on and worrying about unimportant stuff. I feel like I have to sit down and figure out what actually matters because most of the shit I’m doing now just doesn’t.

Severance feels terrifyingly, painfully, imminently possible. If no one ever recovered from covid, we might be living in the world of Severance right now.

This book is not satire. It’s psychological, existential horror.

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spacelordace's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

I really enjoyed just about every page of this book. I thought the concept and storytelling were immaculate. Some things that dropped this from a 5 star for me: any of the characters other than the main character Candace felt very superficial and not well thought out for a book that seems so closely tied to the experience of the characters. That is a personal preference, however, and I could see how that was intentional to reflect how the main character builds relationships with others.
Before the last thing that dropped it for me here is some good: The experience of reading about the fevered is truly creepy and bone chilling I think Ma absolutely nailed the gross and skin-crawly experience without making it hard to read. Another thing she did well: the humor. I thought the dead-pan humor in this book was absolutely hilarious, this was only aided by the fact that I too grew up in Salt Lake City. Some of her descriptions of salt lake had me right back there again, including the decor in the basement of one particular homeowner and last but not least * Smith's * . I was cry laughing to say the least.
Now to continue the bad: thing that dropped it a bit for me should only be discussed with spoilers:

I thought the ending was so incredibly lackluster compared to the rest of the book. It really felt incomplete, but not in a oh-wow-what-happens-next kinda way, more of a what-tf-thats-it? kinda way. Ling Ma clearly has incredible talent for storytelling and this just felt like they choked/dropped the ball right at the end. I was left feeling like I had just watched forrest gump with its incredibly cheesy ending.</spolier>

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nyssbomb's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

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booksandmo's review against another edition

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dark reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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annreadsabook's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I loved this book! I think many have revisited or picked up this novel in recent months because of its eerie resemblance to the coronavirus pandemic, despite the fact that Severance was written years before the COVID outbreak.

The main reason I liked this book, though, is that despite being in large part about a pandemic, it is not a science fiction novel. I enjoyed it for two specific reasons:

1) Its examination of memory, routine, and connectedness to places and loved ones. The pandemic in Severance is a fever that results in victims mindlessly repeating familiar routines in familiar places ad infinitum until they fully succumb to the disease. This is smartly paralleled with the protagonist's revisiting of her past in Fujian, her relationship to her parents, and her experience as an immigrant and daughter of immigrants. Additionally, while Candace sees countless fever victims carry out their repeated tasks, the unfevered Candace herself is not much different from them, as she sequesters herself in her office to continue the same job day in and day out, even as a pandemic ravages NYC.

2) Its underlying discussion of myopic materialism and grind culture. Candace, the protagonist, is so caught up in her desire to further her career and achieve personal success (in pursuit of the "American Dream") that the pandemic that eventually clears out her office barely phases her. I was reminded of how corporate work in COVID times carried on as usual despite often seeming insignificant compared to hundreds of thousands of deaths.

The only reason I'm not giving this a full 5 stars is because I honestly felt the ending left something to be desired, as it felt rather abrupt (I got to the last page and was confused as to where the rest of the book was!). While I do like long books, I rarely feel that books should actively be made longer, but with Severance, I feel that having maybe 50 additional pages to better wrap up the loose ends would've been nice.

Content Warnings