Books › Severance
Severance
360 pages
A deadpan, eerily calm apocalypse where the end of the world looks a lot like another day at the office.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like walking through an abandoned shopping mall—eerie, familiar, and quietly devastating. It is an apocalypse story that skips the explosive action in favor of a slow, creeping dread, capturing the surreal numbness of watching the world end while still answering work emails. The prose is cool and detached, perfectly mirroring the protagonist's millennial burnout and the absurdity of late-stage capitalism. As the narrative drifts between a plague-ravaged present and nostalgic memories of a Chinese immigrant upbringing, it builds a melancholic atmosphere that is both deeply isolating and strangely comforting. It will deeply resonate with anyone who has ever felt trapped by the relentless grind of modern life, offering a wry, deadpan reflection on what it actually means to survive.
- Mood
- eerie
- liminal
- quietly apocalyptic
- isolating
- Tone
- deadpan
- wry
- detached
- satirical
- melancholic
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- millennial burnout · absurdity of late capitalism · immigrant grief · comfort of routine · memory and nostalgia
- The writing
- Cool, precise, and deceptively flat, mirroring the protagonist's emotional detachment while delivering sharp observations.
- The arc
- Moves from numb, detached observation of a collapsing world to a quiet, resolute awakening of agency.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love literary, character-driven dystopias and anyone who has ever felt alienated by corporate office culture.
Content notes
- pandemic/epidemic themes
- grief and parental death
- pregnancy
- cult-like dynamics
About the book
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.
Description from Open Library.
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