She continues her blending of speculative and realist in Bliss Montage, a collection of eight sometimes satiric stories, all told from a woman’s point of view. With fluid ease, Ma merges speculative and realistic fiction as she explores what happens in the aftermath of disaster, including who’s in power (in Candace’s case, Bob, a former IT technician), who controls culture, and who decides the guidelines for religious practice. Ling Ma’s eerily prescient 2018 novel Severance, which she has described as an “apocalyptic thriller, coming-of-age roman à clef, immigration narrative, and office novel,” revolves around Candace Chen, a millennial who works at a Bible-publishing firm, and who is one of nine survivors who flee New York City during the fictitious 2011 Shen fever pandemic.
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