Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


When Satire Isn’t

Severance by Ling Ma

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I wonder what it was like to read this book pre-COVID. Because I can tell you that reading it now, six years after COVID hit, it’s not as satirical as perhaps the author intended. In Severance, the deadly virus definitively originates in China and makes sort-of zombies (not the brain-eating kind) from the infected. Other than that difference, this book is spookily prescient. So much so that I had to keep re-checking the original publication date, but, yeah, Severance was first published in August of […]

a pre-Covid novella that I thought was post-Covid

Severance by Ling Ma

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It is to Ling Ma’s credit that it wasn’t until about 1/3 way through this novella — which is about  a disease that originates in China, flattens New York, and a millennial who sticks with her corporate employer until the absolute last moment that society exists — that I realized it was written before Covid. For prescience alone, I want to give it 4 stars.  This is essentially a zombie story set during the Obama years. Our protagonist Candace is our first generation immigrant who […]

The Winter of Our Discontent

Bliss Montage by Ling Ma

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In Bliss Montage, a woman and her family live in the same house as her one hundred ex-boyfriends, women trapped in a toxic friendship take a drug that makes themselves invisible, and a pregnant woman must caretake the protruding arm of her fetus as she awaits giving birth to the rest of it. The distance from everyday life that fantasy brings us can be used to magnify reality, and Ling Ma takes takes ample advantage of this in Bliss Montage, a short story collection that examines […]

The Mend is Nigh

Severance by Ling Ma

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Ling Ma has crafted a beautiful pandemic tale in Severance, akin to Station Eleven. The tale of humanity’s downfall is told through the eyes of Candace Chen, a disconnected millennial living her days in Manhattan with her directionless boyfriend, her soul crushing corporate job, and the unresolved feelings associated with the death of her parents. She is on a coffee/work/sleep/rinse/repeat schedule, not staying still but also not moving forwards… as society collapses around her. The end of the world this time is not via a […]

But did they try more cowbell?

Severance by Ling Ma

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In the spirit of not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good/adequate/completed review, I’m just going to try and get my thoughts down about this book. Severance was one of my it’s->$4.99-on-Kindle-so-if-I-have-even-the-vaguest-interest-I-will-buy-it impulse purchases. I read the critics’ reviews on Amazon and friends’ ratings on Goodreads, skimmed the free sample to get a sense of what it was about, and was hooked. Unfortunately, my interest had waned by about the third chapter. Severance, which was written in 2018, takes place in 2011 and […]

Pandemic Through My Generation

Severance by Ling Ma

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I tried to read this gem the first few weeks after the pandemic broke out in New York. Couldn’t do it. As it is significantly better than the other pandemic reads (Killing Williamsburg and Zone One), the fact that it dealt with a terrifying virus from China was hitting too close to home. It took months to work up the gumption to return to it. And I’m glad I did, because it is really good. Yes, the focus of it is a pandemic ruining the world. Shen […]



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