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ohyeah_karyn's review
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Drug use, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Violence, Pregnancy, Gun violence, Death of parent, and Pandemic/Epidemic
ladylothlorien's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I find it nearly impossible to put down my thoughts on this book. There is something eerie about reading a pre-pandemic book about a pandemic and then to have so much of it ring true made it a difficult read. It was slow and depressing for a long time and then an event happened that added a sense of urgency to the narrative which carried through to the end. It meant the pacing was a little weird but honestly this book is a little weird: at times satirical and at others poetically reflective. Overall I would say I enjoyed it but I think it also brought up COVID feelings that I’m not sure I’m ready to deal with. And the themes surrounding the term “severance” will be rattling around in my head for a long time.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Murder, Violence, Grief, Death, Confinement, Gun violence, Pregnancy, and Pandemic/Epidemic
Minor: Drug use, Death of parent, and Suicide
jjbug86's review against another edition
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
tense
fast-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
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Gun violence, and Pandemic/Epidemic
Minor: Death of parent
softghoul_jpeg's review against another edition
dark
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
i put this book off for a whole ass year, and for what? loved every second of it. it's crazy to think that this was published in 2018? completely thought it had been published during the high of quarantine. i think that's what also makes this even more eerie to read. ling ma did wonderfully by interchanging the narrative through past and present. i think thats what kept me gripped the entire time. and gave me a sense of impending doom and anxiety. and bob. can we talk about bob? it was givingggggg cult. it was giving suffocation. i think he pissed me off the most. he was like a fucking tyrant. it was as if no one had free will. and for what? why were all the choices made only by him? why couldn't this have been an equal partnership between everyone? i feel like that could have helped everyone out--and maybe things would have turned out differently for ashley, for janelle, for evan, for candance, for bob himself. as i finished the book, i think i understood his need for structure, but in the end, i think that was his demise. to go back to a time that felt safe, certain. candance stated "memories beget memories. shen fever being a disease of remembering, the fevered are trapped indefinitely in their memories. but what is the difference between the fevered and us? because i remember too, i remember perfectly. my memories replay, unprompted, on repeat" (160). so in his remembering, bob triggered the fever, just as ashley did. and i think candance never caught it because she was someone who was uprooted. who had been uprooted for a long time. although, the ending gave me a sense of dread for her. she seemed compelled as she drove by an "unknown source." and as she relayed memories of her mother, of jonathan's time in chicago, i couldn't help but wonder if it was finally triggered in her.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content
Moderate: Confinement, Violence, and Death
devin_raquel's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
I cannot believe this book was published in 2018, so many of the details and plot points feel incredibly similar to the COVID-19 pandemic. The breakdown of New York City, an illness born out of China, the trade lockdowns causing supply shortages all make this novel seem like a parallel universe. A universe where mankind and science couldn’t beat disease.
Ling Ma writes in a way where time feels circular rather than linear; the past melting into the present and vice versa. The main characters’ life before “the fever” mage just as important as her life after “the end.” We all are different people after having lived through a global pandemic, and I think Ma captures this beautifully.
Leaving the ending open to interpretation seemed like a hopeful choice on behalf of the author. Maybe Candace finds another colony of survivors, maybe she gets reunited with Jonathan, maybe there is a happy ending after all. Or, maybe as the book suggest Candace succumbs to “the fever” and looses herself to a meaningless routine like the others.
Ling Ma writes in a way where time feels circular rather than linear; the past melting into the present and vice versa. The main characters’ life before “the fever” mage just as important as her life after “the end.” We all are different people after having lived through a global pandemic, and I think Ma captures this beautifully.
Leaving the ending open to interpretation seemed like a hopeful choice on behalf of the author. Maybe Candace finds another colony of survivors, maybe she gets reunited with Jonathan, maybe there is a happy ending after all. Or, maybe as the book suggest Candace succumbs to “the fever” and looses herself to a meaningless routine like the others.
Content Warnings
Minor: Blood, Drug use, Religious bigotry, Pregnancy, Death, Violence, Confinement, Pandemic/Epidemic, and Gun violence
foldingthepage_kayleigh's review
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
This book was eerily prescient for what was to come during the COVID-19 pandemic, given that it came out in 2018. This book elicited an interesting emotional response in me, overall leaving me feeling reflective and adrift.
While firmly in the dystopian fiction genre, what I found unique was that this read more like a character study than anything. We follow the main character Candace Chen’s reflections on her life, moving back and forth through each point in her life that were mini-apocalypses in themselves, as her worlds as she knew them collapse.
As a Chinese immigrant who moved to the U.S. when she was 6, themes of belonging/unbelonging resonate strongly throughout this novel, and are elements that give richness to the decisions she made and the points she gets to in her life.
I think what really added to my love of this book was the narrator Nancy Wu’s approach to characterizing Candace. Her style was a sort of a resigned deadpan, which I felt added a depth to the character that I don’t know I would’ve gotten from the tree book.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent, Dementia, Medical content, Suicide, Violence, Body horror, Death, Confinement, Grief, Pregnancy, Injury/Injury detail, and Sexual content
Moderate: Vomit
Minor: Car accident
allisonbrooke's review against another edition
emotional
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child death, Grief, Pregnancy, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Murder, Body horror, Death of parent, Car accident, Confinement, and Death
josi1911's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
I normally never read dystopian (if this book can be called that after we all have experienced COVID), but since it was for a book club, I was rather excited. The Beginning until maybe the 17/18 chapter were strong, but then it turned into the typical dystopian story of someone trying to escape their group mixed with cult-esque leadership.
The ending was such a letdown and the themes the book tried to tackle weren't fleshed out enough. How did the Fever transmit? It can't only be fungal, or at least it seemed to have to do with routine, nostalgia and remembering. But I can only say those keywords, because the story lacked fulfillment/tying up the loose ends and like I already said delving deeper into the social criticism it started.
The Author has sometimes beautiful prose with a minimalist but hard hitting tendency and some of the scenes (especially the gruesome ones) felt all too real. So it's sad that that wasn't utilized more to really make strong points regarding the mentioned themes.
The ending was such a letdown and the themes the book tried to tackle weren't fleshed out enough. How did the Fever transmit? It can't only be fungal, or at least it seemed to have to do with routine, nostalgia and remembering. But I can only say those keywords, because the story lacked fulfillment/tying up the loose ends and like I already said delving deeper into the social criticism it started.
The Author has sometimes beautiful prose with a minimalist but hard hitting tendency and some of the scenes (especially the gruesome ones) felt all too real. So it's sad that that wasn't utilized more to really make strong points regarding the mentioned themes.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Medical content, Gaslighting, Drug use, Gun violence, Gore, Violence, Pregnancy, and Death of parent
Moderate: Suicide and Vomit
onyxkat's review against another edition
dark
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Murder, Pregnancy, Suicide, Death, Grief, and Violence
readwitheel's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
The cubicle banality of the end of the world is explored quite skillfully in Ling Ma's Severance. The interweaving of two different timelines flowed nicely with the overall themes and plot of the book. Throughout the novel, it was often a point of dispute wether or not Candace living her routine as an office worker was better or worse than living in the tragedy of post-pandemic world traveling with strangers. Nostalgia, memory, and identity were strong themes that stood out to me in this book, especially when tied with the reminiscing of her parents immigration to Salt Lake City from Fuzhou, China.
The illness in the book, Shen Fever, seems to be triggered by nostalgia and the fevered enter into a state of repetition of their daily routines to never resume consciousness or self-awareness. It is a point-of-no-return sickness, taking almost all of the population. It seems to be implied that Candace herself succumbs to this wave of nostalgia at the end of the book when she is fleeing from the Facility into Chicago, as if nothing ever presented itself with enough emotional power to sway Candace into becoming fevered until now. The trigger for Candace's fever is potentially nostalgia for her ex-boyfriend Johnathan, who lived in Chicago before he moved to NYC.
Ling Ma skillfully blurs the quantifiers of what it means to be sick and healthy, fevered and unfevered,
Candace's personality and life-choices felt distant and almost mechanical to me, even if there were writing descriptions of her laughing, being upset, etc. It was almost as if she were just living the life and having the feelings that she felt like she was supposed to have, rather that trusting that she was living the life she actually wanted to. Even though I felt distant from Candace, I was still able to relate to her, as her struggle of staking out a place in this world through working is one of many facing the harsh brutalities and requirements of surviving within capitalism requires.
Ling Ma skillfully blurs the quantifiers of what it means to be sick and healthy, fevered and unfevered,
Candace's personality and life-choices felt distant and almost mechanical to me, even if there were writing descriptions of her laughing, being upset, etc. It was almost as if she were just living the life and having the feelings that she felt like she was supposed to have, rather that trusting that she was living the life she actually wanted to. Even though I felt distant from Candace, I was still able to relate to her, as her struggle of staking out a place in this world through working is one of many facing the harsh brutalities and requirements of surviving within capitalism requires.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death
Moderate: Xenophobia, Gun violence, and Violence
Minor: Racism and Body horror