Review of 'Severance' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Not your usual dystopian / end of the world novel. Actually, for the main character, her pre-end life does not much differ from her post-end life. And maybe that's the point and the metaphor here. I have to confess not being able to put it down until I was done. The end comes, but it comes very slowly and gradually, which makes it all the more horrifying. The zombies - or as they are called here, the fevered, those afflicted by the shen fever that kills almost everybody - are not walking-dead-style zombies. They go through their most routine activity, repeatedly, mechanically, mindlessly, until they waste away.
I saw a lot of review mentioning how funny the book was. That is was not my read at all (I could be wrong, obviously), again, I was more horrified by the slow decay of the world and the progressively crushing solitude of …
Not your usual dystopian / end of the world novel. Actually, for the main character, her pre-end life does not much differ from her post-end life. And maybe that's the point and the metaphor here. I have to confess not being able to put it down until I was done. The end comes, but it comes very slowly and gradually, which makes it all the more horrifying. The zombies - or as they are called here, the fevered, those afflicted by the shen fever that kills almost everybody - are not walking-dead-style zombies. They go through their most routine activity, repeatedly, mechanically, mindlessly, until they waste away.
I saw a lot of review mentioning how funny the book was. That is was not my read at all (I could be wrong, obviously), again, I was more horrified by the slow decay of the world and the progressively crushing solitude of all the characters.
It is not coincidental, of course, that the narrative weaves together a world-ending fever originating in China, affecting first workers in export-oriented industries, including the one where the main character, herself a child of Chinese immigrants, works. There are definite parallels between the barely-known Chinese relatives to the main character and the survivors group she ends up joining.
The kicker, of course, is the writing itself which mimics the behavior of the fevered.
