Severance

Ling Ma

Text Publishing

Otago Daily Times, November 17th 2018

End-of-the world narratives come in four main flavours: alien invasion, catastrophic climate change, nuclear annihilation and global plague. In Severance, Ling Ma’s satirical take on genre, the agent of destruction is a spore-born fungal illness, Sheng Fever, that slowly but inexorably wipes out most of the world’s population. Rather than kill directly, the infection destroys higher-level brain-function, leaving its victims enacting the same habitual behaviours over and over again until their bodies wear out and they die of hunger or thirst.

One of the few resistant to the illness is twenty-something Candace Chen, who oversees the production special-edition bibles for a New York publishing house. While everybody around her flees or succumbs to the fever she continues to work, spending her days photographing and blogging about the deserted city and taking comfort in the way basic institutions are maintained in readiness for people’s return.

Finally leaving the city, she joins a band of fellow survivors who are headed for Chicago where their self-appointed leader, Bob, has a sanctuary prepared for just such an eventuality. Although she befriends some members of the group, Candace is deeply disturbed by both Bob’s religiosity and his insistence on dispatching the helpless and harmless fever zombies by the traditional ‘shot through the head’ method, and plans to leave before they reach their destination.

When Bob discovers she is pregnant and places her in ‘protective custody’, Candace bides her time until an opportunity to escape presents itself. In the meantime she occupies herself by relating the story of her life and that of her immigrant parents, whom she has spent most of her adult life trying to forget. 

Through these interweaving narratives Ma explores and plays with multiple themes, from the standard tropes of dystopian fiction to millennial shiftlessness and the immigrant experience.

Her primary target, however, is contemporary consumer society and the degree to which the post-fever world resembles the pre-fever one. The lives of white-collar employees who lack the energy opportunity mirrors those of the fevered, the Chinese workers who produce Candace’s bibles – and die of work-related illness – even more so. Bob may be a survivalist, but his refuge is the strip mall where he grew up, and although Candace is determined that her child will be born free, her ultimate goal remains to find a place of familiarity in which to settle and establish an independent identity.

Whether we really need further reminders of the vacuity of modern life is a moot point, but Ma’s vision of a slow and civilized winding down of society is a refreshing change from standard dystopian narrative, and one that recognises the pleasure to be found in the daily routines that are both prerequisite for and a consequence of modern life.

If you are looking for a lighter take on the end of civilization as we know it, Severance, which has just been shortlisted for the Kirkus Prize, might just be the book for you.