A review by boldeststroke
Severance by Ling Ma

dark reflective

5.0

To live in a city is to live the life that it was built for. To live in a city is to consume its offerings. To live in a city is to take part in and to propagate its impossible systems. It is also to take pleasure in those systems because, otherwise, who could repeat the same routines, year in, year out?

i was oscillating between giving this 4.5 or 5 stars because i got caught on the ending like many others. ultimately, i ended up going with the latter because even if it left me wanting a clear ending, it also left me understanding that it wasn't something i deserved. it fit the tone of the novel overall, and i can accept that even in my discomfort. candace chen is a protagonist for the ages. she is a deeply flawed person, a cog in the capitalist machine. her relationship to religion not only through her occupation but also through her mother really fascinated me. while the novel doesn't revolve around it, their similarities stuck out to me the most, this inheritance of being trapped and wanting to be freed, whether from a mall or a country, not at all lost on me. candace's access to her memories made for great contrast against the corporate backdrop of her apocalypse. i loved that shen fever had a nostalgic tinge to it. the feeling is something i have always been interested in, so to see it contorted into this mundane horror left me feeling the most unsettled i have ever felt in my life. chapter 10 with ashley and janelle and evan... wow. i got chills. i don't like to make comparisons between novels that deal in the same subgenres because they're never apt, and each work tackles different themes, especially in this case. but to bring up station eleven very briefly, i think it's worth unpacking that i'll never be able to have a pre- and post-type relationship with this book the way i did with that book. severance will always exist through the lens of a pandemic i've somehow lived through, whether i like it or not. ling ma writes prose with a voice that i admire so deeply.