Severance: A Novel

by Ling Ma

Overview

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 halt operations. The subways squeak 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250214997
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	05/07/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Ling Ma received her MFA from Cornell University. Prior to graduate school she worked as a journalist and book editor. Her writing has appeared in Granta, Playboy, Chicago Reader, Ninth Letter, Time Out, ACM, and elsewhere. A chapter of Severance received the 2015 Graywolf SLS Prize. She teaches at the University of Chicago.

Editorial Reviews

“In a breathtaking mash-up of now and just a hair beyond now, Ling Ma’s apocalypse glistens with terror, humor, anger, and humanity. I promise, you will not be able to stop reading this ingeniously constructed and electrifyingly harrowing book.” —Samantha Hunt, author of The Dark Dark

“As a look into where our overconsumption might lead us, Ling Ma’s Severance rings terrifyingly true. More than that, it’s a moving meditation on home, belonging, and life itself—all rendered in cool yet affecting prose that’s too good not to keep reading.” —Rachel Khong, author of Goodbye, Vitamin

“Ling Ma has given us a terrifyingly plausible vision of our collective future, one in which our comforts have become pathology and our habits death—and, in her protagonist, a hero who doesn’t know if she should be seeking salvation or oblivion. And yet, somehow, Severance could easily be the funniest book of the year. It’s a brilliant, deadpan novel of survival, in this world and in the precarious world to come.” —J. Robert Lennon, author of Broken River

From the Publisher