Anita Rut Kristjansdottir &
Severance by Ling Ma

pandemic/zombie apocalypse/critique of capitalism. very enjoyable

Loved until the last 40 pages when I completely stopped caring

Started off a little slow, but quickly gave me that 5 ⭐️ feeling. LOVED it!!

Best speculative fiction I’ve read maybe ever…. It made me think about ritualistic living and being a creature of habit. How do we live each day without just following the same carved out path made by ourselves over decades and years. Gave me a whole new appreciation for zombie literature 🧟‍♀️

3.25 stars. Definitely an enjoyable book that really speaks to the millennial dilemmas of working with exploitative global capitalism. I found the writing & tone a little all over the place, and was let down by the ending. However, still a great promising debut!

3.5. Beginning was hit or miss — I liked the first couple chapters but then Chapter Three had enough cringy moments that I almost DNFed it. The writing gets better though, and the ending was exactly right. Would have preferred more punctuation and fewer mentions of Clinique.

Ling Ma is an incredible writer, this was absolutely fantastic.

Really wanted this to be five stars, but i still feel like the book was lacking something that I cannot put my finger on. although this could change in the future, but for now it’s at a 4.5-4.75 stars. I am sad to say how long it took me to getting around to reading the “novel that predicted the pandemic”, which is how it was advertised on tiktok, etc. But this is actually closer to a zombie apocalypse without canabilism or violence. Shen fever is a fungal infection that attacks the brain and the occupant basically enters a trance like state until they most likely die of natural elements or hunger/thirst I’m sure. If you read The metamorphosis by Franz Kafka and liked it, you’d probably like this. Although the main plot is steered around this fevered vs. not fevered, it is mostly about how we continue to pursue work in the face of tragedy. It is also about isolation while still in a group of people that you’ve essentially been forced to be in a cohort with due to the given circumstances. Our main character, Candance, finds peace and guidance in continuing her office job past the point of actually doing her job when business dries up. Even the fevered continue to work their jobs…very creepy. Okay ramble over. i’d recommend this book

Simple review = Please read this book.

Maybe 3.5. The concept was really interesting but I just couldn’t get into it and I thought the anti-capitalist stuff was a little heavy-handed.

I can write a whole blog post about this story and how good it was to read. Something about the tone, something about how bland Candace is, something about her as a caricature. I'll have it written up. Overall a read so timely for me at the current stage I am in my live. I only gave it .5 less due to that rather lazy ending, but as I reflected on it again, it fit the airiness of Candace's personality quite well. She's a wanderer.

The prose is very good, but the story is incredibly boring. The main character, Candace is just the worst, so boring and is just kind of 'there' the whole time.

This story reminded me so much of the events following the covid-19 outbreak, only to realize that it was released in 2018!

this book just made me depressed and uneasy but I can see how people like it and I applaud them also I read it from 2am-5am

This book can be summed up in two sentences: I got up. I went to work in the morning. The End. :) This actually reminds me of something else I read or saw that was structured like this but in a more interesting way. Other thoughts: * WILD that she wrote this two years before COVID hit. * Punctuation would be nice. Personal preference, does not affect the score. But they're useful as a differentiation tool. * Love it when books end without an ending. * Story is fine. Interesting, at the very least. Bit concerned that the Millennial Novel™️ genre follows the same script: existential dread, cool jobs, brand names, social classes, prestigious education, sex, love and breakups, meltdowns, toxic families, etc. All timeless themes but it's surface-level stuff. The girls need to dig a little deeper. * Fever symptoms were really interesting in that it turned people into literal task rabbits. Are we all fevered then?

Obviously there's something to be said about the book's portrayal of Marx's theory of alienation (the story is set in 2011 and there's a fascinating brief encounter with Occupy Wall Street), but it was impossible for me to not read Severance as a series of allegories about a depressed mind's search for meaning within recursive loops of thoughts and routines.

3.5 to 4... pretty timely (considering the times we're living in, though i can imagine how creepy this might've been had i read it earlier into the pandemic) and somrhow reminded me of the webtoon yuna & kawachan, which i haven't continued reading in over a year lmao ngl kinda wish there was more of an ending, though i suppose that isn't really the point

felt kind of flat for me, but it's still interesting. might give it another try in the future idk

When I first read the summary for this book, I was unimpressed. I wasn't especially interested in the way this book was marketed as a dystopian zombie apocalypse. But I bought it to support a local bookstore when the coronavirus pandemic became serious, and I'm so glad I did: this became one of my favorite books this year. Severance is the culmination of everything I spent my undergraduate years trying to write. It's both a veneration of material glamor and a biting critique of capitalism's disregard for its victims. It sheds light on the ridiculous nature of office work, verging on satire while never truly diverging from its reality. It thoroughly explores the Asian-American experience, but as an inevitable backdrop and not as the centerpiece of the story. Everything from the church as a centerpiece of the immigrant experience, down to a mother's near-religious devotion to expensive skincare products, felt familiar and real to me. The way Candace grasps for the right words when she's asked to speak Chinese with a businessman in a factory in Shenzhen, how high-stakes the interaction feels. I am fascinated by Ling Ma, how intimately she understands popular culture, how incisively she critiques it. I saw myself in so much of this book. I believed every bit of it. The only part of the book I really didn't like was the prologue. I felt the writing there was weaker, the novel could've gone without it.

I wanted this book to have a more detailed & gratifying ending

couldn’t have started this book at such a perfect time in my life. sincerely, a gen-z about-to-be corporate slave

A meandering, unique take on the American millennial condition, especially as a Chinese immigrant. However, I couldn't help but be distracted by the plot holes surrounding the disease, given I read this in the year of COVID-19.

A sharp critique of capitalism, consumerism and modern office culture as well as an exploration of an immigrant woman’s feeling of otherness and alienation via the trope of zombie apocalypse

so so many cool things packed into this book and even on my reread i still feel like i haven’t uncovered most of it.

the two people i recommended this to thought it was mid. idgaf though i stand by this book. this is one of the few asian-american books that aren’t… cringe (as an asian girl from the states).

asian-american immigration tropes did well here (surprisingly). the mother-daughter relationship stood out to me the most, i really ached for what they had in fuzhou. i def relate to being a “deadbeat” daughter. what ma captured really well was the lingering sense of unbelonging everywhere candace goes (utah, nyc, china, etc)… maybe the reason why candace never gets fevered is because there is not really a place or action she is attached to the extent that she would be succumbed to repetition. the issue is that’s exactly what she’s searching for by continuing to work and go to the office even when everyone is presumed dead.

capitalism, consumerism and christianity is overbearing in the book, which makes it so distinctly american. everyone has or had a useless job.

candace manages outsourced labor, making it impossible to ignore the atrocities occurring within those factories. there’s no room for plausible deniability. she knows bibles like the back of her hand, not the religious content but the book as a commodity. at multiple points she breaks down the steps needed to produce a bible, sometimes listing variations. candace’s job makes it so that she doesn’t get to be ignorant about the production processes and what goes into creating our commodities, which most of us have the luxury of. also quite symbolic that the bible becomes such a commodified object since it is something that people value and worship. nothing is sacred under capitalism.

products+their respective brands are listed with specificity that i can’t help but recall bateman. we accumulate so much only to be left with emptiness and dissatisfaction. we recognize our consumerist patterns but without fail become hungry for more.

candace can never escape christianity, which at least she seems for the most part neutral about. personally i would’ve gone crazy. from utah to working in bibles to that crazy bitch bob… bob would’ve been the last straw for me i wont lie.

on the reread i was so much more aware of jonathan and godd they are so cute… the fire escape interactions, the sticky note recommendations, “my heart barked with love”, “i still love you” “whenever you say that it sounds like you’re a criminal confessing to a crime” (smth like that)…

bob, to me, was an extension of the irrationality of the modern condition personified into an unlikable, controlling dumbfuck on a power trip. he makes up all these rules to follow and creates rituals for people to participate in, and all of this works because people needed to be told what to do. maybe i’m reaching, but could be telling of what the modern world teaches its people (particularly to be obedient, follow instructions, be good workers).