Born in Sanming, China, Ling grew up in Utah, Nebraska, and Kansas. She holds an MFA from Cornell University, where she also taught. Currently, she serve as an assistant professor at her alma mater, University of Chicago.
发表于2024-05-03
Severance 2024 pdf epub mobi 电子书
图书标签: 小说 美国 科幻 英文原版 末日 华裔作家 女性 移民
Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. With the recent passing of her Chinese immigrant parents, she’s had her fill of uncertainty. She’s content just to carry on: She goes to work, troubleshoots the teen-targeted Gemstone Bible, watches movies in a Greenpoint basement with her boyfriend.
So Candace barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. Then Shen Fever spreads. Families flee. Companies cease operations. The subways screech to a halt. Her bosses enlist her as part of a dwindling skeleton crew with a big end-date payoff. Soon entirely alone, still unfevered, she photographs the eerie, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost.
Candace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the 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?
A send-up and takedown of the rituals, routines, and missed opportunities of contemporary life, Ling Ma’s Severance is a moving family story, a quirky coming-of-adulthood tale, and a hilarious, deadpan satire. Most important, it’s a heartfelt tribute to the connections that drive us to do more than survive.
末世氛围的建构有想象力,语言也有功力,核心还是有点陈旧的移民身份认同
评分Eerie reading in 2020. Compelling narrative structure weaving pre- and post-apocalypse timelines, figuring out what happened at the End, plus an escape story. A nuanced critique of capitalism & consumerism from a second-gen persepctive (mom's yearning for work v millennial ennui), a parallel story of severance from the homeland and need to belong
评分末世病毒的侵袭 不如看到过于熟悉的坐标下城市衰败崩塌心悸 果然是生活化的场景最有冲击力 - To live in a city is to take part in and to propagate its impossible systems. To wake up. To go to work in the morning. It is also to take pleasure in those systems because, otherwise, who could repeat the same routines, year in, year out?
评分挺好看的僵尸文学,真正的敌人不是病菌,而是capitalism、consummerism、corporate culture三大件。#没有烂尾!
评分The world is a mall. 原本以为是the story of animal laboran, 后来发现也不尽然,更像是置放在资本主义中的「人是习惯的动物」的故事。和COVID-19及SARS挺不一样的,书中Shen-fever时期人人的恐慌倒并不明显。「回忆」甚至是「乡愁/怀旧」与病毒免疫及感染有着微妙的关联,使得这些主题在这本涉及移民题材的小说里没有完全落入俗套。对女性的体验和视角有了更细致的刻画,有「为母则刚」的影子。双叙事线并行得干净利落,是轻松的page-turner。部分情节的设定和想象还是有些匮乏了。
Severance 2024 pdf epub mobi 电子书