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Severance (novel)

Severance AuthorLing MaCountryUnited StatesLanguageEnglishGenreScience fictionPublisherFarrar, Straus and GirouxAugust 14, 2018Media typeHardbackPages304ISBN978-0-374-26159-7
Severance is a 2018 satirical science fiction novel by the Chinese-American author Ling Ma. It follows Candace Chen, an unfulfilled Bible product coordinator, before and after Shen Fever slowly obliterates global civilization. Severance explores themes of nostalgia, modern office culture, monotony, and intimate relationships. The novel, Ma's debut, won the 2018 Kirkus Prize for Fiction and was included on many prominent Best Books of 2018 lists.

Plot
The narrative follows Candace Chen after societal collapse due to the Shen Fever pandemic and in flashbacks to her earlier life. Candace and her parents emigrate from Fuzhou, China to Salt Lake City in her youth. In her twenties, Candace drifts through New York City, living on her inheritance from her parents following their deaths, before getting an unfulfilling job in production for elaborate design variations of the Bible. In the early days of the pandemic in 2011, Candace discovers she is pregnant after splitting with her boyfriend, Jonathan. As businesses shut down as the pandemic worsens, Candace accepts a lucrative contract with her employer to be one of the few to continue to work in the office until a certain date, because having a workplace open is good for the company's image. Having no living family to be with in the US, Candace feels little drive to flee the city as most others do. Eventually she is the only employee left and is no longer contacted by her superiors. Per Jonathan's parting suggestion to revive her old pursuits in photography, she documents the final days of New York City's collapsing infrastructure on a blog called NY Ghost. When shocked by the realization that she has fulfilled her work contract, Candace is one of the final survivors to escape the city in late 2011.

In the present, a group of other immune survivors finds Candace near death in a New York taxi cab on the shoulder of a highway in Pennsylvania. The quasi-religious group, under the domineering leadership of Bob, is traveling towards "the Facility," which he promises to be safe. On the way there, they follow Bob's rituals to "stalk" houses for supplies, killing the "fevered" people inside. A member of the group who was seemingly healthy succumbs to Shen Fever while visiting her childhood home, leading Candace to theorize that nostalgia is somehow related to the mindless routines of the fevered. The survivors arrive to find that the Facility is an abandoned shopping mall in suburban Illinois, which Bob co-owns and spent much of his youth in, and begin to make a new home there. As punishment for rebellion and due to the discovery of Candace's pregnancy, Bob has her imprisoned. Candace begins to hallucinate the presence of her dead mother, who helps her realize that her safety is only ensured until the birth of her baby. When Candace finds Bob in his nightly routine of walking around the mall, now fevered, she is able to steal his keys and escape. Candace takes a car and heads for Chicago, planning for the future.

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