Severance

作者：LingMa

出版社：Farrar,StrausandGiroux

出版年：2018-8-14

页数：304

定价：GBP20.60

装帧：Hardcover

ISBN：9780374261597

内容简介
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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.

作者简介
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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.

评论 ······

阅读的过程让我想起了很多事情。我记得我离开纽约前，说自己在这片看似神奇的土地上，除了奋斗的脚印几乎一无所有，希望离开这里之后可以真正顺应自己的心和自然的节奏生活。The city doesn't empower me, despite all the opportunities it seems to offer, in reality it just traps me more in tradi…

作者很会抖包袱…在纽约公寓的消防楼梯给爸妈烧美元冥币+杂志上剪下来的名牌包和倩碧护肤品那段笑死我

读之前对内容一无所知，刚开篇就提到了N95口罩，一次性手套，瘟疫，我呼吸都加速了。作者以SARS为原型，虚构了一场源起深圳叫做Shen fever的全球性瘟疫。故事主人公生活在纽约，目睹着纽约因瘟疫流行而从繁华到废弃，想想现在的纽约简直是疫情震中，一种不寒而栗的感觉。小说中的两个故事，都让我对摩西出埃及有了进一步的认识，其一是“我”的父母于1988年抵达美国，因次年发生在国内的事件而决定留在美国；…

这本书的英文对我来说还是稍微难了一点。我读了很久之后才慢慢读出头绪来。对于英文的不熟练确实影响了我对文章的理解，但是同时很佩服亚裔把英文用的如此娴熟。确实是值得再读的一部作品。不过…就是有些地方太explicit了…caught me off guard

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