Reviews tagging 'Medical content'

Severance by Ling Ma

12 reviews

samcanuel's review against another edition

adventurous dark reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

This is the only pandemic book I have been able to enjoy post-covid to date. Really well written, very thought provoking, and times honestly quite creepy. Ma’s pandemic is an imaginative commentary on the routine way we live our lives under capitalism.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pregnancy, Violence, Gun violence, and Medical content

Moderate: Xenophobia

Minor: Vomit

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. 

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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

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.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Medical content, Gaslighting, Drug use, Gun violence, Gore, Violence, Pregnancy, and Death of parent

Moderate: Suicide and Vomit

kyeruhh's review against another edition

challenging dark tense slow-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

3.5

This is the kind of book that makes me wish I was still in school and could analyze in English class. The fact that this was published in 2018 is wild to me with how spot on some of the characters mindsets to a pandemic are.

I tend to not enjoy when books have open endings, and this was no exception BUT I do feel that it fits with Candace’s sort of aimless personality.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Grief, Medical content, and Suicide

mraddd's review against another edition

dark mysterious 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? No

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Abandonment, Medical trauma, Violence, Medical content, Injury/Injury detail, and Death of parent

Moderate: Murder

Minor: Pregnancy

dreamdoughnut's review against another edition

challenging dark reflective 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? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death

Minor: Xenophobia, Pregnancy, Sexual content, Confinement, and Medical content

nyssbomb's review against another edition

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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Confinement, Death, Death of parent, Dementia, Gore, Medical content, Pregnancy, Sexual content, and Terminal illness

Moderate: Alcohol, Body horror, Drug use, Drug abuse, Suicidal thoughts, and Suicide

Minor: Car accident

wretchen's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional funny medium-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Blood, Confinement, Death, Gore, Murder, Pregnancy, and Violence

Moderate: Medical content and Sexual content

annreadsabook's review against another edition

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. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Death of parent, Medical content, Pregnancy, and Sexual content

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts and Suicide

f18's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad 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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Child death, Chronic illness, Confinement, Death, Dementia, Emotional abuse, Grief, Gun violence, Medical content, and Violence

Moderate: Death of parent, Misogyny, Murder, Pregnancy, Racism, Suicide, and Xenophobia

Minor: Abortion, Car accident, Drug abuse, Drug use, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, and Vomit