Severance

This was not a revolutionary novel by any means, but I really appreciated how Ling Ma incorporated a lot of social issues created by capitalism throughout this book. She touches on immigration, worker's rights, outsourcing jobs, etc. It hit a little close to home at times "post-Covid" and honestly I was surprised to see that it was written before that. This is one of those books that you only see things from Candace's perspective, so as she's dealing with things or escaping scenarios, you don't get well-rounded endings for everything. Things happen, and the story moves on along with her life. If you don't llike loose ends, probably not one that I would recommend.

I was a bit disappointed. Having read in the past year or so both Zone One (which I liked a lot) and Station Eleven (which I loved), I felt that this book - another post-apocalyptic novel with lots of insightful flashbacks to "normal" life - paled in comparison to those. I did appreciate the forceful writing, and I thought aspects of it were very well done (for example, the parts focused on the publishing industry, the production contractors in China, and the NY Ghost blog).

This book felt twice as long as it actually was.

A lot of different themes are being attempted here. We got: anti-consumerism, exploitation of oversea labor, first- and second-generation immigrant experiences, complicated mother-daughter relationships, religious fervor, and the collapse of society just to name a few. And while they were set up, somehow each one felt abandoned? I feel like I was watching a juggler constantly throwing balls up in the air with no intent to attempt to catch them.

Our protagonist come across as extremely passive, like a buoy just gently bobbing about as the mildest of ripples (in the form of external events) roll past her. I struggle to point to any development she exhibited by the end of the book (which may have been the intent, but I wish her resistance to change would've been more explicitly pointed out if that were the case).

This was a book club read, and one of those "we all hated this, right?!" kind of discussions, and somehow I enjoyed it the most and I'm still only giving it two stars.

“Someone once said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. We can now revise that and witness the attempt to imagine capitalism by way of imagining the end of the world.” (Fredric Jameson)

I read this book in 2021, which no doubt coloured my intrepretation of it, but it's left a lasting impression. A really biting portrayal of modern "knowledge work", and the increasing absurdity of Candace's life as the wheels gradually fall off her world...

"A second chance doesn't mean you're in the clear. In many ways, it is the more difficult thing. Because a second chance means that you have to try harder. You must rise to the challenge without the blind optimism of ignorance."

I.....huh. After I got past my initial hangup with the minimalistic dialogue (seriously, not a quotation mark or other indication to be had here), this book sucked me in hard. Candace works for a publishing company in New York at a time when Shen Fever sweeps the world. The fever reduces people to their most basic elements, drying them out to a husk of their former selves and reducing them to mindless zombies where they repeat the most basic tasks they're familiar with endlessly. Somehow Candace and a handful of others remain immune(?) to this disease though, and they band together for survival. Interspersed with the present-day narrative is Candace's backstory leading up to and during the plague, where we learn more about her, about the flu, and about how the world reacts during a time of crisis.

I thought the depiction of the fevered was incredibly creepy, and had me on edge for a large part of Candace's post-apocalypse jaunt through the Midwest. This is what basically kept me going, because Candace herself ended up being incredibly frustrating as a main character. I wanted to root for her, but at the same time she basically shuts down during crisis and requires other people to push her into making decisions. I loved the depiction of the crumbling society as the plague gets going, and how the different people around Candace react.

What I didn't like was the ending. Or, rather, the absence of an ending. I honestly had tuned in so completely to the story that when I hit the acknowledgements page, I thought my ebook had skipped. I don't mind ambiguous endings, but this was just basically a non-ending. We just....stop having more chapters. Incredibly frustrating. The story framework also requires you to be invested in the satire about capitalism and being a corporate slave for it to really have an impact.

So, three stars for it being an enjoyable, satirical read with an unsatisfying conclusion.

I was immediately engrossed in this satirical takedown of office culture, labor outsourcing, and the routines we use to establish our identities. The tone is similar to Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go" or Atwood's "The Year of the Flood", so if you enjoyed those, try this. It floored me in the best way.

I didn't like it!

What makes this zombie apocalypse satire interesting, to me, is how it's grounded in the very specific circumstances of Candace's Chinese-American upbringing and moreover in her experience in the specialty bible production business. Oddly, the book is most vivid not in the zombie scenes but in the parts dealing with the details of book ordering and production, including the site visit to the Shenzhen factory where the bibles are made.

This would probably have suited me better had I been American, a millennial, or both. As I'm not it felt a little bland, and certainly not as satirical as some reviewers find it. The unquoted dialogue is a minor annoyance, but an annoyance still.