Most important, it’s a heartfelt tribute to the connections that drive us to do more than survive. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit.Ī send-up and takedown of the rituals, routines, and missed opportunities of contemporary life, Ling Ma’s Severance is a moving family story, a quirky coming-of-adulthood tale, and a hilarious, deadpan satire. Candace Chen, our narrator, is a quiet, somewhat. It’s also a near-perfect book to round out the year that was 2020. A send-up and takedown of the rituals, routines, and missed opportunities of contemporary life, Ling Mas Severance is a moving family story, a quirky coming-of. Ling Mas Severance uses its post-pandemic world to encapsulate a critique of our current one as it deals with the fortunes of second generation immigrant. Severance won a 2018 Kirkus Prize, was listed as a New York Times Notable Book of 2018, and shortlisted for the 2019 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. Ma explores many themes in Severance as well as epidemic disease: immigration, consumerism, globalized capitalism, office culture, family dynamics, and the. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. Severance (2018) is the debut novel from Chinese American novelist, Ling Ma. Soon entirely alone, still unfevered, she photographs the eerie, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost.Ĭandace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though.Įnter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. Her bosses enlist her as part of a dwindling skeleton crew with a big end-date payoff. So Candace barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York.

She’s content just to carry on: She goes to work, troubleshoots the teen-targeted Gemstone Bible, watches movies in a Greenpoint basement with her boyfriend. With the recent passing of her Chinese immigrant parents, she’s had her fill of uncertainty.

Maybe it’s the end of the world, but not for Candace Chen, a millennial, first-generation American and office drone meandering her way into adulthood in Ling Ma’s offbeat, wryly funny, apocalyptic satire, Severance.Ĭandace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine.

Ling ma severance review