Severance was my "travel read" this summer and, although I've left the cramped window seat of the plane, I'm still thinking about Ma's work days after turning the last page. 

Candace Chen is not a good protagonist or a traditional one by any means.  While this takes place in a post apocalyptic setting in which humanity's "uninfected population" has dwindled, she isn't "chosen" by any regard.  Candace isn't distinguishable or remarkable or brilliant or witty.  If anything, the wit in this piece doesn't stem from malice or sarcasm, but instead from a lifetime of self anesthetization against the brunt of a society that shaped her.  She is untethered by those around her, an isolated insomniac with a small social circle who works a mundane publishing job and is all too content remaining on the outside looking in.  Candace Chen is a boring woman, who lives a boring life and is fine with it - and that is what makes her such a fascinating vessel to critique the grander scheme of capitalism and its many psychosocial constraints.  She is a woman of routine, someone who seeks out stability while simultaneously moving with the current of the only world that she has ever known while everyone else around her tries desperately to pull away.

Severance is a read that sticks with you not because Candace Chen is memorable, but because she is so unremarkably bland in every which way to a point in which it makes it great.  Severence follows a ragtag band of twenty-something's trying to survive in the apocalypse with only their "office politics" to guide them, and Ma has created a marvel by excluding doomsday preppers from the narrative and instead focusing on how "art girls" and World of Warlock IT nerds would navigate a new world - or even if they could.  While I finished it a week ago, I'm still thinking about its many symbolisms and subtle critiques on capitalism as a whole from

the Shark Fin soup, Candace's job focusing on the mass production of Bibles, Candace deciding to give herself more busy work to pass the time after physically moving into the office, the payout to risk her life and still go to work for the sole purpose of making hypothetical buyers feel like everything is alright, and everything else in between

All in all, Severance was a phenomenal read and I highly recommend any twenty-something year old woman to give this a read and I cannot wait to give this a reread in a few years time when I finally sell my soul to corporate America :')