Reviews with content warning for Pregnancy - Severance

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.

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readwithbells's review against another edition

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3.5

A remarkably forward-thinking apocalypse book about a plague that is triggered by or flourishes within nostalgic memories. We follow Candace through a few timelines, one where she becomes the only person working in her company, one where she is caught up in a power-hungry group post-pandemmy, and interspersed with pieces of her childhood and her parent’s lives.

I think this book is well-written and 100% accomplishes what it set out to do, I just prefer books I get more emotionally attached to and this one really kept me at arm’s length. To people who liked Leave the World Behind or Kazuo Ishiguro’s When We Were Orphans, Severance would be a good comp title. It was just too meandering for me, with a through-line caught up in the flow of memories instead of character arc, which is my personal preference. I’m glad I read it though!

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hazel_georgene's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
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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jamiereadies's review against another edition

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challenging reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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not_another_ana's review against another edition

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challenging 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

3.75

3.75/5

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, umprompted, on repeat. And our days, like theirs, continue in an infinite loop. We drive, we sleep, we drive some more.

The end is nigh and Candace Chen is still going to work. She's typical corporate drone, working in cheap Bible manufacturing submerged in the everyday routine, so when the Shen Fever hits she just forges on. But the disease cannot be contained. People get sick or flee the city, work stops and services come to a halt leaving immune Candace completely alone in New York City until a group of survivors find her. Led by a self styled messianic leader, with promises of a safe place to settle in, the group might pose more danger to Candace than the disease.

This book was published in 2018 but the similarities to the Covid-19 pandemic cannot be ignored, to the point that I wondered if Ling Ma is secretly a seer. Both diseases start in China, they have similar symptoms at first glance, people wear facemasks, the world pretty much shuts down, etc. If you're still feeling the effects of the pandemic then I don't recommend picking this up. The book also lacks any quotation marks which would usually annoy me but in this case it works in giving the story a dreamy vibe. The author also uses it quite sparingly since this is mostly an internal narration.

Ling Ma constructs this lovely atmospheric vibe-y cocoon of narration that drags the reader in. It's poetic and dreamy yet cemented in reality. It's a book that happens in the past, the present and the future at the same time. This is unmistakably personal, influenced by the author's life and it shows in the way the writer explores the themes of identity, belonging and family. A critic of capitalism and routine, I could easily connect with it and Candace. The way she clung to normality and the monotony of work resonated with me, sometimes the world is ending and you just can't deal with that. Where it lost me a bit was with the group of survivors and their journey. I understand adding a bit of conflict and drama to the story but Candace's interior world was so rich that this was a harsh break from the chapters in the past and the exploration of her psyche.

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foldingthepage_kayleigh's review

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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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itsalina's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense medium-paced

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

3.0

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allisonbrooke's review against another edition

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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

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