Severance by Ling Ma A send-up and takedown of corporate drudgery, late-stage capitalism, and adulthood listlessness familiar to so many of us, Ling Ma’s Severance serves up a wry and tense satire featuring an eerily monotonous pandemic. Candace Chen, a millennial publishing drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is so devoted to routine she barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps across New York. But then it spreads beyond the city. Families flee. Companies hit pause. Subways squeak to a halt. In a heartbeat, Candace is uninfected but alone, wandering the streets to photograph the silent, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost. Even antisocial Candace can’t be content, much less survive, on her own forever. Enter a group of survivors led by power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers or cling to the only community …