Severance

A Novel

By: Ling Ma

Narrated by: Nancy Wu

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.

Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. With the recent passing of her Chinese immigrant parents, she’s had her fill of uncertainty. 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.

So Candace barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. Then Shen Fever spreads. Families flee. Companies cease operations. The subways screech to a halt. Her bosses enlist her as part of a dwindling skeleton crew with a big end-date payoff. Soon entirely alone, still unfevered, she photographs the eerie, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost.

Candace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers?

A 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. Most important, it’s a heartfelt tribute to the connections that drive us to do more than survive.

©2018 Ling Ma (P)2018 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"Narrator Nancy Wu delivers an outstanding performance of this cheeky satirical novel...Listeners will be entertained by the world building; cast of amusing, eccentric characters; and bizarre charm of the aloof heroine." (AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award Winner)

A surprising novel, excellent narration

I throughly enjoyed the story, at times it shocked me with the changes in tone, odd descriptors that contributed to a general feeling of uneasiness throughly the book (which works well for a novel about the disintegration of society due to a virus). Nancy Wu’s narration fit well with the tone of the story, and I really felt that she was Candace. No spoilers, but the ending was particularly good. Not predictable, but it felt like an ending that made sense and fit with the characters personalities and the general plot of the novel. It didn’t feel inevitable, it felt like it belonged.

One of the best

This is a beautifully crafted and haunting end-of-the-world tale that weaves the disparate yet entangled realities of life in urban USA and factory-city China together into a captivating and satirical critique of contemporary society. It takes a bit to get used to the Millennial-like, detached tone of the narrator before you realize that it is perfect for the story. The book has left me thinking for days. Ling Ma is an excellent writer and I look forward to her next book.

Melancholy at its finest

Thoroughly enjoyed this book and the narration. It is a bit robotic which was jarring at first, but it fit the tone of the book so well once you got used to it. I felt so sad for our protagonist the entire way through, it was a beautiful story of despair.

Quite good except the vey end

Interesting non-gory zombie story. Hard to like the characters tho maybe their coldness was part of the meaning. Did like it and listened all the way through. Felt like the ending was a cop out.

Fantastic narration

Wonderful narrator she inhabits the character so convincingly. It’s hard to pace fiction well on audiobook and this one is perfect.

Unsatisfying ending

The whole story was good but the ending was very unsatisfying. It would’ve been better if she was settled.

My new favorite book!?

This book is as good as it gets, I don't know what more a person could want, I just keep backspacing what I write because fancy adjectives will only cheapen my true love for this novel, see for yourself. Books don't get any better than this.

The narrator ruined it for me

Interesting story. It felt incomplete. It ended abruptly right in the middle of a plot arc. The narrator was awful. Deadpan, emotionless and nasal. She frankly ruined it for me.

Adrift in the Apocalypse

It’s about a plague, Shen Fever, that originates in China and kills most of the world’s population. There are several exceptions, people who just don’t become infected. It was published in August 1918 and has an uncanny, unsettling parallel to our present day. It's satirical, bleak, funny and serious.
Ling Ma is a young writer and I look forward to what comes next.

Prescient, to say the least. My favorite post-apocalyptic novel

Writing is tight and engaging. Every word rang true. So many uniquely American narratives wound together in a gorgeous, dark, funny novel of a world destroyed by a plague. Narrator tells the history of her immigrant family interspersed with her own cross-country adventure after escaping from a ravaged NYC. Some parts made me laugh out loud, some made me cry. I don’t remember the last time I found a novel so engaging. No one has ever (intentionally) written a better description of dreadful sex. I thought of this book continually during the lockdown. The empty Times Sq. that she’d imagined had really come to pass... The narrator was 100% perfect. Blasé, guarded, and wry- just what you’d imagine for the narrator.