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A review by rosepoints
Severance by Ling Ma
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
5.0
yknow, i thought i had survived the covid pandemic well enough, but reading this book stirred up so many memories of that time and how people first reacted to the news. then it made me think about how people treat that time now and how covid is still going around today. that made the reading experience a lot more….chilling and eerie and anxiety-inducing than i thought it would. perhaps i would’ve had a different reaction had i read it prior to the pandemic, but i think it just goes to show how evocative ling ma was in her writing and how her book mirrors real life almost perfectly.
“severance” tells the story of candace chen, an asian-american office worker in new york city. there’s not much going on in candace’s life. her parents are dead, she has no real friends to speak of, and her boyfriend is kinda just There. so when shen fever, a fungal infection, turns into a global pandemic, she doesn’t really react much to it. the rest of the book details her life before, during, and after the first outbreak of shen fever and how she copes with everything.
i think the thing i love most about this book is how there is so much to unpack. i absolutely adore complicated, ambiguous, introspective fiction, and ling ma delivered on that. there’s the usual discussion that dystopia and apocalyptic fiction provokes, but on top of that, there’s the asian-american / immigrant tale of candace and her parents, the complicated relationships between the three of them, the immigrant narrative and the tension between chinese and american culture, all of that. there’s also a lot there in terms of independence, freedom, nostalgia, and memory.
i never would’ve expected all of that based on the summary. i would’ve expected a zombie-esque thriller, replete with terror and horrific scares. i think that this book still manages to nail that “horror” atmosphere, especially in the scene with ashley’s house and the scene with candace and the little girl, but it’s not the kind of obvious jumpscare horror that you see in most epidemic/zombie/survivor thrillers. instead, it’s so so much more than that.
utterly entranced by this book from ling ma and eager to read more from her!
“severance” tells the story of candace chen, an asian-american office worker in new york city. there’s not much going on in candace’s life. her parents are dead, she has no real friends to speak of, and her boyfriend is kinda just There. so when shen fever, a fungal infection, turns into a global pandemic, she doesn’t really react much to it. the rest of the book details her life before, during, and after the first outbreak of shen fever and how she copes with everything.
i think the thing i love most about this book is how there is so much to unpack. i absolutely adore complicated, ambiguous, introspective fiction, and ling ma delivered on that. there’s the usual discussion that dystopia and apocalyptic fiction provokes, but on top of that, there’s the asian-american / immigrant tale of candace and her parents, the complicated relationships between the three of them, the immigrant narrative and the tension between chinese and american culture, all of that. there’s also a lot there in terms of independence, freedom, nostalgia, and memory.
i never would’ve expected all of that based on the summary. i would’ve expected a zombie-esque thriller, replete with terror and horrific scares. i think that this book still manages to nail that “horror” atmosphere, especially in the scene with ashley’s house and the scene with candace and the little girl, but it’s not the kind of obvious jumpscare horror that you see in most epidemic/zombie/survivor thrillers. instead, it’s so so much more than that.
utterly entranced by this book from ling ma and eager to read more from her!