Severance

`A fierce debut from a writer with seemingly boundless imagination...It's a stunning, audacious book with a fresh take on both office politics and what the apocalypse might bring: This is the way the world ends, Ma seems to be saying, not with a bang but a memo.' * NPR * `It's a novel that sneaks up on you from all sides: it's an affecting portrayal of loss, a precise fictional evocation of group dynamics, and a sharp character study of its protagonist, Candace Chen. It also features one of the most hauntingly plausible end-of-the-world scenarios I've encountered in recent fiction...[T]his is a monumentally unnerving novel, one that leaves no easy answers or comfortable nooks in which to take refuge.' * Tor * `Ma's apocalypse is a work of genius...wickedly funny...an extraordinary book.' * NZ Listener * `Severance is the most gorgeously written novel I've read all year; when I finished it, I immediately picked it up and read it all over again.' * New Republic * `A cracking read, deeply moving and at times hilarious.' * Lifted Brow * `A hilariously searing critique of who we are and how we survive in a modern world...Ma's caustic humour and incredibly smart commentary on late capitalism compares our adherence to routine and groupthink to a terminal infection. Her precise language, original voice, and use of all-too-relatable details inform the debut's deadpan depiction of a society teetering on the edge.' * Shondaland * `Severance operates with severe restraint...but there's a power to the restraint, and an elegance to the understatement.' * Vox * `Ma's engrossing, masterfully written debut transforms the mundane into a landscape of tricky memory, where questions of late-stage capitalism, immigration, displacement and motherhood converge in such a sly build-up as to render the reader completely stunned.' * BookPage * `It's a stunning book. I devoured Severance in as close to a single sitting as possible...and it shook me on an emotional level that no other apocalyptic novel has reached.' * Chicago Review of Books * `Gripping and original...Lyrical, vividly detailed and fresh.' * Chicago Tribune * `Funny, frightening, and touching...Ling Ma manages the impressive trick of delivering a bildungsroman, a survival tale, and satire of late capitalist millennial angst in one book, and Severance announces its author as a supremely talented writer to watch.' * Millions Most Anticipated (This Month) * `In the end, Severance isn't so much a story about zombies as it is an imaginative critique of capitalism. Underneath Ma's deadpan comedy lie shrewd observations of the West and the decadence of our everyday existence.' * Paris Review * `A clever and dextrous debut.' * Publishers Weekly * `A smart, searing expose on the perils of consumerism, Google overload, and millennial malaise...An already established audience will be eager to discover this work.' * Library Journal * `In this shrewd postapocalyptic debut, Ma imagines the end times in the world of late capitalism, marked by comforting, debilitating effects of nostalgia on its characters...The novel's strength lies in Ma's accomplished handling of the walking dead conceit to reflect on what constitutes the good life. This is a clever and dextrous debut.' * Publishers Weekly * `Ma's writing about the jargon of globalised capitalism has a mix of humour and pathos that reminded me a little of Infinite Jest and a little of George Saunders; it produced a sense of estrangement from my cosmetics, my clothes, and my iPhone. I finished it feeling sad and sensitive to the garbage all around us that comes at such a high cost to planetary and human welfare.' * New Yorker, What We're Reading This Summer * `Embracing the [apocalyptic fiction] genre but somehow transcending it, Ma creates a truly engrossing and believable anti-utopian world...[An] extraordinary debut.' * Booklist, American Library Association (starred review) * `Ma's writing is compelling and cogent, perfectly satirising a world that often feels beyond parody.' * Nylon * `Ma's language does so much in this book, and its precision, its purposeful specificity, implicates an entire generation. But what is most remarkable is the gentleness with which Ma describes those working within the capital-S System. What does it mean if a person finds true comfort working as a cog in a system they disagree with? Is that comfort any less real?' * Buzzfeed, #1 Summer Read Pick * `This is a biting indictment of late-stage capitalism and a chilling vision of what comes after, but that doesn't mean it's a Marxist screed or a dry Hobbesian thought experiment...Ma also offers lovely meditations on memory and the immigrant experience. Smart, funny, humane, and superbly well-written.' * Kirkus Reviews, starred review * `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 * `My autocorrect keeps putting King Ma instead of Ling Ma, but maybe that's on the mark: she totally rules. Severance is like nothing else around: a witty workplace novel and a terrifying plague yarn, an immigrant story and a sort of homecoming, full of Chinese whispers and New York ghosts.' * Ed Park, author of Personal Days * `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's apocalypse glistens with terror, humour, anger and humanity...You will not be able to stop reading this ingeniously constructed and electrifyingly harrowing book.' * Samantha Hunt, author of The Dark Dark *