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A review by emmareadstoomuch
Severance by Ling Ma
5.0
Ling Ma served us a whole meal. A feast. A buffet. A week’s worth of Thanksgiving dinners made up of gorgeously subtle metaphor and allegory and motif, if you will.
https://emmareadstoomuch.wordpress.com/2022/01/10/the-very-best-books-of-the-worst-year-yet/
And I will personally be stuffing myself my dear boy.
This is the kind of book that makes me wish I was still a student and I was assigned this book in an English class, and could spend a week's worth of hour-long lectures deep in discussion with 20 other people (but reasonably only four who had actually read it).
It's the kind of book I could have reread immediately after reading for the first time, and then a million times after that.
It's the kind of book that makes you think about that terrible movie with Bradley Cooper where he takes the pill that opens his brain up to full functioning, because that's the only way I can reasonably imagine being able to fully appreciate this.
The themes in this, man, the f*cking themes: The immigrant parent’s journey versus Candace’s pregnant journey in a new world. The fevered mindlessly going through tasks versus the pre-pandemic office workers doing the same. The idea of a “colony” and what that means. So, so many more.
I need to reread this immediately, is what I'm saying.
Bottom line: I want to eat this with a spoon.
---------------
book club update
reading this pandemic novel during a pandemic for a) the self-destructive vibes and b) the book club. in that order
join the discussion here
follow on instagram here
---------------
pre-review
do you remember those weird toys from childhood that were like little heart-shaped doodads with cartoon characters on them, and when you soaked them in water they turned into branded dish towels?
this book made me feel like one of those. but in reverse.
review to come / at least 4.5 stars but maybe 5
---------------
currently-reading updates
taking a mental health test by reading a post-apocalyptic book in which the apocalypse was a pandemic featuring a virus that first appears like a cold
---------------
tbr review
my face when i hear the words "anti-capitalist dystopian literary fiction":
https://emmareadstoomuch.wordpress.com/2022/01/10/the-very-best-books-of-the-worst-year-yet/
And I will personally be stuffing myself my dear boy.
This is the kind of book that makes me wish I was still a student and I was assigned this book in an English class, and could spend a week's worth of hour-long lectures deep in discussion with 20 other people (but reasonably only four who had actually read it).
It's the kind of book I could have reread immediately after reading for the first time, and then a million times after that.
It's the kind of book that makes you think about that terrible movie with Bradley Cooper where he takes the pill that opens his brain up to full functioning, because that's the only way I can reasonably imagine being able to fully appreciate this.
The themes in this, man, the f*cking themes: The immigrant parent’s journey versus Candace’s pregnant journey in a new world. The fevered mindlessly going through tasks versus the pre-pandemic office workers doing the same. The idea of a “colony” and what that means. So, so many more.
I need to reread this immediately, is what I'm saying.
Bottom line: I want to eat this with a spoon.
---------------
book club update
reading this pandemic novel during a pandemic for a) the self-destructive vibes and b) the book club. in that order
join the discussion here
follow on instagram here
---------------
pre-review
do you remember those weird toys from childhood that were like little heart-shaped doodads with cartoon characters on them, and when you soaked them in water they turned into branded dish towels?
this book made me feel like one of those. but in reverse.
review to come / at least 4.5 stars but maybe 5
---------------
currently-reading updates
taking a mental health test by reading a post-apocalyptic book in which the apocalypse was a pandemic featuring a virus that first appears like a cold
---------------
tbr review
my face when i hear the words "anti-capitalist dystopian literary fiction":