Picture that scene on the incomparable show 'Community' when Jeff Winger is typing on his Blackberry as a zombie, and that scene is this book. A fungus is creating the "fevered" who go through the motions of what they did before they were fevered. Though the fevered seem zombie-like, they aren't actually zombies, they aren't attacking people, but that doesn't make the situation less haunting. Within this intriguing scenario, is Candace, a girl who moved to America from China as a child. Now she works on the 32nd floor in an office in Times Square as a product manager, mainly getting bibles made. I love those character-in-solitude type of books. Then throw in an apocalyptic scenario and I'm all in. Some might say there is too much detail here, but I love those sorts of small details. And because this is a book about nostalgia and memory, maybe those small details are intentional. Aren't most memories and nostalgia based on those small details? The story keeps flipping between Candace's early life, as things are falling apart, and what happens shortly after when there are barely any non-fevered left. I thought Ling Ma was able to balance all three of these "time lines" seamlessly and I was never bored with any of it. Her sentences are full of life. Candace is such a lovely, fully formed character. The book far exceeded what I expected from the description, what I thought the description would be capable of. I'll read anything Ling Ma writes. The non-fevered characters "stalk" houses and buildings for supplies which could only remind me of 'Roadside Picnic' by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. (Tarkovsky is actually mentioned in the book and he also directed the movie 'Stalker' so possibly I'm not imagining things here, though many books have been reminding me of Roadside Picnic lately.) Severance is also very similar to another awesome book this year 'The Book of M' by Peng Shepherd that involves memory in a disintegrating world.