Severance meanders; take that for what it is and don’t expect more from it and it becomes a valuable exploration of memory in contrast to the present. It’s for people who live in cities and love walking them, both familiar and unfamiliar parts. It’s for people who work because they need to do something, anything, nevermind, what it actually is. It’s for immigrants and people who feel trapped between more than one place, who have matured over states and provinces and cities and across lines. It’s for millennials who understand they can’t just live outside the system; there is no such thing. If you know what it is to do those things and be young today, you’ll get it.
I would say that the book blurbs on the cover and the back are not entirely accurate. I would not call it a zombie book, not even really in the spirit of one. I would say it’s a spiritual sibling to Colson Whitehead’s “Zone One” in that it’s about the end of the world, a plague has taken out humanity, and our protagonist eeks out a meager living in New York. If you enjoyed Zone One for it’s literary take on the zombie narrative, you’ll enjoy Severance for it’s similar themes, although with much less adrenaline. There are no scenes of brain eating, very little violence, and none of the usual things you encounter in a zombie narrative, so be warned if that’s what you’re jonesing for. It lacks the nihilistic feel of most really good zombie books, or the existential malaise of most apocalyptic books. It comes and goes and lets you feel whatever that is while you’re in it, which I’d say I haven’t encountered in this genre yet.
Ma does have a few curious choices that I can’t figure out; why is it set, primarily, in 2011? It seems almost like an alternate dimension, where things that we know and remember took place, but had less impact or meaning because of other things going on in her narrative. Some people have wondered why she never uses quotations for spoken dialogue, but I think it works well enough, and lends to the memory fog feeling of the whole book.
At times, this was a bit of a slog, but by the end I was glad I picked it up and stuck with it. I read the first 150 pages or so over about two week, in fits and starts, and then did the last half this last 24 hours. I don’t know if the narrative picked up, or if I just got more determined to finish. I’m glad I finished it.