SEVERANCE by Ling Ma

Candace Chen is one of the few New York survivors—so far—of a deadly pandemic caused by a fungus.  This novel has a before-and-after timeline.  In the present, Candace is traveling cross-country with a handful of other young adults, with their fanatically religious leader Bob.  In the pre-pandemic world, Candace is a project manager for Bible production—a job that she does not really like but that she is exceptionally good at.  As her officemates begin to disappear, either abandoning the city where the infrastructure is starting to crumble or succumbing to the Shen Fever, Candace carries on, even after she no longer has any work to do.  Candace is a loner, declining her boyfriend’s invitation to move out west with him, and her aloneness becomes even more striking when the city becomes a ghost town.  In fact, Candace resurrects her photo blog, NY Ghost, and sees a kind of beauty in deserted subway stations and horse carriages with no drivers.  The title of this book seems appropriate in a number of ways.  Candace observes at one point that nostalgia seems to make a person susceptible to the fever.  In that case, she should be fine.  She doesn’t seem to be nostalgic for how things used to be, nor does she have other personal entanglements.  Candace was born in China, as were her now-deceased parents, but she has no family connections there to speak of.  Her severance may be her emotional salvation.