Review: Severance

There's a before, and there's an after.

Severance

Ling Ma

293 pages - 2018 - dystopian, sci-fi

June 24th, 2025 — June 27th, 2025

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I think I’m at the point now “post-pandemic” (while still being painfully, anxiously aware that Covid is, in fact, still very present) where I am romanticizing the beginning of Covid. It’s easy to forget the fear and panic, the uncertainty, and just yearn for the days when I could learn to make a carpet and play cornhole outside with my brothers.

I was a student in college right when Covid hit. My school sent us home for spring break, and halfway through it we were told not to return to campus, all our belongings trapped inside the never-renovated dorm rooms that slowly got hotter as the months went by. My mom and I actually snuck onto campus to grab some of my school supplies, and decided to move me out completely “just in case”—the next day the campus was closed.

The pandemic was not good. But there were parts of it that were—I played so much Animal Crossing with strangers online that it felt like I was still meeting people. I got to spend more time with my twin brother that year than I had or will in a long time. My parents and siblings stayed healthy. We were able to organize Zooms with cousins and go on walks around our suburban town.

I know that we were lucky. When school started again in the fall, I was able to go back to campus and see my friends, albeit from a bit far away. I was able to get the vaccine before the end of the spring term.

There was a time, though, especially at the beginning, when it felt like that was it. Of course the world is different now, but it feels like we’re more or less completely springing back—and not in a good way. I wish that some of the camaraderie from the pandemic filtered into life today. It feels like we’re more distanced now than we were at the height of the disease.

This book took me right back to so many of those feelings, especially the passages about the beginning of the infection. Whisperings and rumors about who might be fevered. Weird vacancies and shutdowns of shops that were institutions. More and more fear surrounding leaving one’s home.

I was surprised at how accurate the feelings in this book were, considering it came out a few years before the global pandemic. Ling Ma predicted shortages of PPE, odd politics surrounding human health, the emptiness of Times Square. I’m glad that not all of her predictions were correct; we’ve largely made it through, maybe scarred and forever altered, but still kicking.

Summary (Spoilers!)

Candace Chen details the feeling of the world both before and after Shen Fever, a pandemic that affected the entire United States and possibly the whole world. She starts the book talking about how she and her twenty-something friends in New York City would spend their days before the world shut down.

Pre-pandemic, Candace worked at a publishing company called Spectra, which would coordinate with overseas productions of different books. Candace worked in the Bible division, so she would work with manufacturers typically in China to produce special versions like the Gemstone Bible.

In present day, Candace had found some other survivors that were seemingly immune to the fever. They are led by Bob, a controlling and religious man who is leading them to “the Facility”, a sanctuary promised by Bob himself. They also complete ritual “stalks” to gather supplies. Sometimes these are dead stalks, meaning the people in the house already succumbed to the fever; other times, they are living stalks, meaning that they have to kill (or “release”, as Bob says) the fevered victims that are repeating their routines.

The fever itself, Candace explains, is a fungal infection rather than a viral. That means that it cannot be transmitted between people easily, but the spores can be spread on surfaces and inhaled. The fever begins with some vague symptoms that are very similar to a common cold—fever, of course, as well as dizziness, aching, and stomach pain, among others. However, it quickly worsens, leading to people becoming essentially husks of their former selves. They repeat their routines over and over again, not realizing that their sandwich bread is moldy or all their hair that they’re brushing has fallen out.

At Spectra, Candace tried to transfer to the Art department for a while, not wanting to be in Bibles forever. One employee took some free time off, and a coworker told Candace secretly that they were fevered. One day, as employees are leaving and starting to work remotely, Candace is offered a contract to stay in the office and coordinate the people who are working remotely until November 30th, 2011, since keeping the main office open will give them a leg-up on the competition. Candace agrees, since she does not feel any desire to leave New York.

We also learn of Candace’s backstory and how she met Jonathan, an on-off boyfriend. He lived in the apartment below her and they met on the fire escape one night, then started seeing each other. One morning he told her that he was moving out of New York and asked if she wanted to come with him; when she got upset, they essentially stopped talking. She felt like her presence was an afterthought, and he felt that he was trapped staying in New York. Right after he leaves, she learns that she is pregnant with his child.

The stalk group heads to Ashley’s childhood home one night without Bob, not telling him where they’re going. She just wanted to stop in and get some of her old drugs hidden under her bed. While there, she starts trying on dresses, unable to be roused from her state; they realized that she is fevered and go to tell Bob. He kills Ashley, as well as Janelle, Candace’s friend and a healthy member of the group. Candace pulls Evan aside and asks if he wants to escape the group with her and go off on their own.

As Candace works in the office, less and less people show up for work until she is the only one left. Times Square is empty of tourists and New Yorkers alike; the lights go out so much that she can see the starts at night in the middle of the city. While there, Candace starts posting on her blog again, NY Ghost, a photo blog documenting how New York is changing through the years especially post-pandemic. She gains quite a large following, especially from colder countries where the fever spreads less rapidly.

When the group finally makes it to the Facility, they realize that it is a shopping mall that Bob used to frequent as a young boy; he had grown up in the area. They each pick their own rooms—shops in the mall—and start to make their home there. Bob, however, with the help of the men, corners Candace and locks her in a small shop, saying that Evan told him everything: that she was planning on leaving, and that she’s pregnant. He promises to take care of her, but says that they can’t trust her and she has to stay locked in the shop. The other members of the group are not allowed to talk to her and can only bring her food and supplements for the baby.

Candace starts to hallucinate her dead mother coming to talk to her before bed every night. Her mother gives her advice on how to escape; she explains that Bob is only keeping Candace safe because of the baby, and once it’s born, Candace’s safety is not guaranteed at all. Candace hears Bob walking through the mall every night, his keys jingling, and tries to think of a way to get a key so she can drive away.

Eventually, she is allowed to walk around the mall, but not any further. Evan is discovered dead in his makeshift room, potentially having overdosed on Xanax purposefully. Adam and Todd plan on going on a quick supply run, and Bob gives them the keys to a car outside. Since they’re returning late, they say that they will leave the keys outside Bob’s door; he says he will definitely be asleep.

That night, as the sun is rising, Candace decides to feign a walk around the mall because of the baby keeping her up. She goes to take the key that was left at Bob’s door. When she gets there, however, Bob is just leaving his room, starting to do his nightly walk. His gaze is fevered, and she realizes that he’s sick; in a rage, Candace starts kicking him and hitting him, with him not fighting back at all, just fevered. Adam catches her, but she steals a key off of his ring and runs away. She takes a car and drives towards Chicago, where Jonathan had called home, and starts planning for a future with her child. She makes it there right as the car’s fuel runs out, so she gets out and starts walking.

Fever Pitch

I knew from the beginning of the book that, if anything, I would enjoy Ling Ma’s writing. She has a beautiful way of describing things—I love how subtle so many of her passages are, and how much they convey. On page four of the book, she wrote:

We Googled is there a god, clicked I’m Feeling Lucky, and were directed to a suicide hotline site.

Her words were wonderfully evocative, and some of her characters were incredibly believable. One of my gripes is that we did not get more of the character work. Besides Candace, we got to know her mother and Bob, and a little bit of Janelle and Ashley, but I feel like the other members of the survival group—Todd, Evan, Adam, and everyone else—as well as those in her office and her past were flat. We just did not know anything about them; I understand that the story had to move, and Candace did not interact with them much, but I wish they had some more defining features.

That being said, though, I loved Bob’s character and how unpredictable he was. I also loved the description of Ashley in her childhood home, and the realization that she is fevered slowly dawning on us, the readers, as well as the characters. I, too, did not want to believe that she had fallen into a stupor doing her old routines.

The fever itself too was terrifying. The idea of someone becoming a husk, just to do their daily routine over and over again—tearing their own hair out by brushing it, setting a dinner table just to put the plates away and set it again, going until they become so emaciated that they keel over and die—is a horror.

I can’t tell if I am glad or a little disappointed that the fever could not be transmitted well from person to person. It felt like the stakes were not as high as they could have been, but maybe that’s a good thing. If people were too wary of each other, then we would not have gotten so many interpersonal details.

I found it fascinating too that Ling Ma made the decision not to use quotation marks. I have read a couple books where this is the case, and it can get quite confusing trying to figure out who’s speaking, and whether someone is speaking or if it’s still Candace’s inner monologue. However, I loved the choice for this story.

I think one of the central tenets of the book is the confusion between waking and sleeping, between health and fever, between thinking and speaking aloud. I thought that having no quotation marks contributed to the confusion. It is a book about the split between the past and the present as well as all these dichotomies from the jump—hence the name.

I enjoyed the book quite a bit. I think I’ve been on a great streak so far, and despite the dark subject, I thought this was a great book to read on the beach this week. It almost made me nostalgic for the early days when people were taking care of each other and much more understanding.

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Total pages read so far, 2025: 8,294

Total books read so far, 2025: 21

Next book: Black Tide by K.C. Jones