Here is a novel that I am sure wasn’t all that popular across 2020 and 2021. I say that Because Ling Ma’s Severance is about the outbreak of the fictional Shen Fever (yes, from China) in 2011, which causes its victims to suffer from lapses in memory, headaches, disorientation, shortness of breath, and fatigue.
The novel itself is set in the United States and follows Candace Chen, a Bible product coordinator, and that’s all most online synopses will give out about the narrator. I guess you and I will just have to read the book if we are at all curious about her.
What is most intriguing about this novel is how it tells an alternate history, containing real world events that play out different due to the political and societal collapse caused by Shen Fever. I think that also makes us curious about how Covid-19 shaped our history, and allows us to consider how things might be had it not happened (e.g. economies and healthcare systems not being in shambles for several years).
In truth, I think Severance has actually become more interesting and tantalising to readers in a post-Covid world. Many of us that were not affected in any significant way probably just associate pandemics with being cooped up at home and being bossed around a lot by government figures, so I’m sure Ma’s different exploration of a world freshly entered into the 2010s will be more exciting than what many of us experienced.
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