Severance by Ling Ma: On New York (Part 1)
Zombie narratives are typically not my thing, but I uncharacteristically picked up Ling Ma’s Severance in a recent book haul. I couldn’t ignore the promise of a captivating immigrant narrative, the post-apocalyptic vibe, the familiar settings -- split between New York City and the Midwest (the two places I’ve called home) -- and the New York Times “Notable Book of 2018” sticker on the cover.
Severance touched me like every glowing review promised it would. The novel follows Candace Chen, a woman in her late twenties living in New York. A global pandemic strikes; Shen Fever forces its victims to repeat the same, monotonous task until they die doing so. The story oscillates between Candace’s life in New York as the plague worsens and her later experiences with a band of survivors, driving through the Midwest and seeking refuge.
I won’t reinvent the wheel. There are countless fantastic reviews of Severance out there. Instead, I want to share the passages in Severance that resonated with me: the moments I felt as if Ma was reaching into my brain and putting words to emotions I’ve struggled to name. I’m writing this reflection as a two-part series: the first (below) on New York and the second on routine, both key themes in Severance.
Severance by Ling Ma: on New York
Candace's evaluation of her experience in New York immediately struck me when I was reading Severance. She says, “I have always lived in the myth of New York more than its reality. It is what enabled me to live there for so long, loving the idea of something more than the thing itself.” I came to Manhattan a bright-eyed 18-year-old recently accepted to New York University. I was ready for all New York had to offer: Broadway, Lincoln Center, fashion week. I saw some shows and watched fashion week on YouTube, like I did back home in Chicago.
I quickly began to feel like everyone around me was trying to push down some part of themselves, the part that identified them as a former “fly-over state” resident. Covering their faces, they put on war paint to compete in some weird game where the winners have obscure tattoos, Fjallraven Kanken backpacks, and coveted internships at the Met. They have to accept and fit into the illusion of the city, just as Candace feels she must in Severance.
In New York, I took solace in waking up early on weekend mornings and walking around the city. My feet took me to Central Park, MacDougal Street in the Village, and Astor Place, to name a few. These familiar places were made new to me in the quiet of the morning. No car horns blaring, no tourists taking selfies, and -- my favorite -- no people emerging from subway stations trying to look busy, important, or beautiful. I luxuriated in the emptiness.
Ma captures New York’s irony: it’s a lonely place that feels least lonely when its 8.6 million residents aren’t out and about. Candace narrates a night spent in her Bushwick apartment. I felt like a 19-year-old Nika could’ve said the same words as she tried to fall asleep in her NYU dorm. “I just lay there,” Candace recalls. “Trying to pass the hours before I had to get up and go to work, which was impossible when the night was so loud. My neighbor’s electric air conditioner, the bass pumping from other people’s cars. They were all converging together to say one thing. You are alone. You are alone. You are truly and really alone.” The sounds of the city could be a constant reminder that everyone else was doing something worth doing, and I was just in bed.
Then the morning would come, and I’d walk. A feeling of connection to my fellow (wo)man came to me in glances exchanged with a man walking his dog or an elderly woman on her way to Gristedes grocery. Not in the consumerist vision of New York -- the sunglasses, the cigarettes, the “instagram-worthy” cronuts, the Soul Cycle memberships, or the concert tickets that were supposed to make us feel like we were cool enough to walk Manhattan’s streets as New Yorkers. Candace ruminates: “the city was so big. It lulled you into thinking that there were so many options, but most of the options had to do with buying things: dinner entrées, cocktails, the cover charge to a nightclub.”
It’s easy to read Severance as purely a criticism of the city. Yet, Ma expertly describes the beautiful and painful ways New York shapes Candace. New York is the quintessential place to “grow up,” to cast off the shackles of small hometowns and crazy families and become someone new. Jonathan, Candace’s neighbor, tells her: “the first place you live alone, away from your family… is the first place you become a person, the first place you become yourself.” New York is that place for so many young people, including me.
Ma shows Candace eating Fujianese street food because it’s cheap and comforting. She talks to a boy she doesn’t know on the fire escape during a dinner party at her own home. She puts on her mom’s old dress from the eighties and walks the streets, taking photographs. It’s in these experiences Ma shows the beauty of the city. They’re simple, and, in many ways, divorced from the moneyed vision of New York plastered across the video billboards in Times Square. Ma peels back New York’s shiny exterior to reveal the reality of a gritty city with both its flaws and its virtues. That is the nuanced magic of Severance.