A review by chlonline
Severance by Ling Ma

adventurous dark emotional reflective sad tense

• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

To live in a city is to take part in and to propagate its impossible systems. To wake up. To go to work in the morning. It is also to take pleasure in those systems because, otherwise, who could repeat the same routines, year in, year out? 

ling ma’s severance is an anti-capitalist, anti-work social commentary that revolves around a chinese-american immigrant in dystopian new york. for something written pre-pandemic, severance paints an eerily accurate picture of a pandemic in a capitalistic society. to add, one of the things i loved the most about the book was its title — it’s one of the wittiest titles ever and i love how every chapter leads me to realize the different things the word “severance” may pertain to.

tl;dr severance is fucking neat go read it