Severance

Candace narrates from a time before the End. In her early twenties, she is living in Brooklyn and conducting a strained relationship with Jonathan, a freelance writer. Jonathan is disillusioned with the city because “everything [is] a status symbol and everything costs too much” (11). He suggests that Candace should come with him to Puget Sound and abandon her job as the Senior Product Coordinator of the Bibles division at Spectra, a book-printing company. Candace oversees the production of different editions of the Bible, often outsourcing labor to factories in China. On the side, she runs a rarely-updated anonymous blog called the NY Ghost, where she uploads photos of the city “from an outsider’s perspective” (14). She is needled by Jonathan’s suggestion that she can just up and quit her job, and the two of them argue.

The next morning, Candace arrives at the Spectra offices to find a company-wide meeting in session. Her colleague Blythe, who used to work in Bibles before transferring to the trendy Art department, hands her a flyer which explains that a new and fatal disease has reached New York. Shen Fever originated in Shenzhen, China, and spreads through fungal spores. Employees are given respirator masks and gloves as a precaution.

As Candace leaves the meeting, Blythe informs her of an issue with one of her projects, the Gemstone Bible, which is to be packaged with a gemstone necklace and marketed to preteen girls. The gemstone supplier Spectra contracted with has shut down after a series of lawsuits from workers who developed lung diseases due to unsafe working conditions. Candace calls the publisher of the Gemstone Bibles, who curtly tells her to find another cheap manufacturer if she wants to keep their business. Upset, Candace rips her phone off the wall and breaks the receiver, but she soon composes herself enough to call Hong Kong and begin the search for another manufacturer.

The narrative switches back to the Beginning, where Bob is making the case that Shen Fever victims aren’t human anymore, and that it is therefore acceptable to perform mercy killings on them. After infection, “the fevered” become bound to old patterns, mindlessly repeating portions of their daily routines from before they fell ill. Bob compares them to zombies, but Candace disagrees, as the fevered pose no physical threat to the uninfected. Rattled by her unusual assertiveness, she runs to the woods and vomits. Bob joins her after a few minutes and advises her to find comfort in spiritual guidance—he himself became a Christian only after the apocalypse. He believes that the group of survivors, who are all ostensibly immune to Shen Fever, have been “divine[ly] selected,” for a greater purpose, but Candace doesn’t think there is anything special about her. Bob tells Candace that he would like her to engage more with the group and prompts her to lead the nightly saying of grace.

The story of Candace’s pre-apocalypse life continues. After graduating college with a major in photography, she moves to New York “carried by the tides of others” (34). She spends her first summer in Manhattan wandering the city aimlessly and engaging in casual sexual encounters, including one with a lawyer named Steven Reitman. Her mother Ruifang has recently died of early-onset Alzheimer’s. One day the hospice facility sends Candace a package of Ruifang’s personal effects, including a bag of dried shark fins. Candace’s roommate, Jane insists that they throw an ironic “Orientalist” dinner party featuring shark fin soup. In the intervening weeks, Candace does nothing but walk through the city, taking pictures and uploading them to The NY Ghost. Day after day, she relives the same routine, taking “a grim satisfaction” (41) in the repetition. On one of her walks, she passes the hotel where her family stayed on a business trip for her father’s first American job. She recalls how her parents used to fight every night over her mother’s desire to return to China, which conflicted with her father’s determination to stay in America and climb the corporate ladder. At nine years old, Candace sided with her mother, wanting nothing more than to go back home. She doesn’t feel that way anymore.

Candace and Jane host the shark fin soup dinner party in late August, though the soup turns out viscous and unpleasant. Candace goes out on her fire escape to smoke and meets her downstairs neighbor Jonathan, whom she invites up to the party. Candace is charmed by Jonathan, but her attempts to get closer to him are blocked by Steven’s appearance at the party. He refers Candace to a job interview at his brother Michael Reitman’s printing company, Spectra, before making a move which she reciprocates.