A chapter of Severance received the 2015 Graywolf SLS Prize. Her writing has appeared in Granta, Vice, Playboy, Chicago Reader, Ninth Letter and elsewhere. Prior to graduate school she worked as a journalist and editor. Ling Ma received her MFA from Cornell University. Most important, it’s a heartfelt tribute to the connections that drive us to do more than survive. Should she escape from her rescuers?Ī 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. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. Soon entirely alone, still unfevered, she photographs the eerie, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost.Ĭandace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Her bosses enlist her as part of a dwindling skeleton crew with a big end-date payoff. So Candace barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. 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.

With the recent passing of her Chinese immigrant parents, she’s had her fill of uncertainty. 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.Ĭandace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine.

Severance book