“The past is a black hole, cut into the present day like a wound, and if you come too close, you can get sucked in. You have to keep moving.”
If you loved Ling Ma’s Severance, you’ll know that it’s tough to pin down precisely what makes this novel so unsettling. Part dystopian fiction, part literary satire, and part post-apocalyptic tale, Severance blends a global pandemic with sharp observations about capitalism, consumerism, work, isolation, and modern life. So, what should you read after Severance? Thankfully, there are plenty of books like Severance that explore similar ideas, from strange and unsettling literary fiction to dystopian novels about the end of the world. Whether you’re looking for books similar to Severance by Ling Ma, novels about pandemics and loneliness, or stories that mix dark humour with social commentary, there’s something here for you. Today at What We Reading, we’re exploring our favourite books like Severance to read next – and why each deserves a spot on your TBR pile.
Severance Summary
Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. So she barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps through New York. Then Shen Fever spreads. Families flee. Companies halt operations. The subways squeak to a halt. Soon entirely alone, still unfevered, she photographs the eerie, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost.
Candace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech, Bob. They’re travelling to a place called the Facility, where Bob promises they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers? A send-up and takedown of the rituals, routines, and missed opportunities of contemporary life, Ling Ma’s Severance is a quirky coming-of-adulthood tale and satire.
Company – Max Barry
Kicking off our list of books like Severance is Max Barry’s acclaimed satire, Company. Stephan Jones is a shiny new hire at Zephyr Holdings. From the outside, Zephyr is just another bland corporate monolith, but behind its glass doors, business is far from beautiful. The receptionist is paid twice as much as anybody else to do nothing; the sales reps use self-help books as manuals; no one has seen the CEO; no one knows exactly what they’re selling, and missing doughnuts are the cause of office intrigue.
While Jones originally wanted to climb the corporate ladder, he now finds himself descending deeper into the irrational rationality of company policy. What he finds is hilarious, shocking, and utterly telling.
Station Eleven – Emily St. John Mandel
Kirsten Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. That was the night when a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilisation as we know it came to a crashing end.
Twenty years on, Kirsten moves between the settlements of the altered world with a small troupe of actors and musicians. They call themselves The Traveling Symphony, and they have dedicated themselves to keeping the remnants of art and humanity alive. But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who will threaten the tiny band’s existence. And, as the story takes off, moving back and forth in time, the strange twist of fate that connects them all will be revealed.
Check Out The Best Books Like Station Eleven
The School For Good Mothers – Jessamine Chan
Frida Liu is struggling. She doesn’t have a career worthy of her Chinese immigrant parents’ sacrifices. What’s worse is she can’t persuade her husband, Gus, to give up his wellness-obsessed younger mistress. Only with their angelic daughter, Harriet, does Frida finally feel she’s attained the perfection expected of her. Harriet may be all she has, but she’s just enough. Until Frida has a horrible day.
The state has its eyes on mothers like Frida. Now, a host of government officials will determine if Frida is a candidate for a Big Brother-like institution that measures the success or failure of a mother’s devotion. Faced with the possibility of losing Harriet, Frida must prove that she can live up to the standards set for mothers – that she can learn to be good.
Our Wives Under The Sea – Julia Armfield
Miri thinks she has got her wife back when Leah finally returns after a deep-sea mission that ended in catastrophe. It soon becomes clear, though, that Leah is not the same. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded on the ocean floor, Leah has brought part of it back with her, onto dry land, and into their home.
Moving through something that only resembles normal life, Miri comes to realise that the life that they had before might be gone. Though Leah is still there, Miri can feel the woman she loves slipping from her grasp. Our Wives Under the Sea is a debut novel similar to Severance about falling in love, loss, grief, and isolation.
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The Memory Police – Yoko Ogawa
On an unnamed island off an unnamed coast, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses – until things become far more serious. Most of the island’s inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those few imbued with the power to recall the lost objects live in fear of the draconian Memory Police, who are committed to ensuring that what has disappeared remains forgotten.
When a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards. As fear and loss close in around them, they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past.
My Year Of Rest And Relaxation – Ottessa Moshfegh
Our narrator should be happy, shouldn’t she? She’s young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart. It’s the year 2000 in a city aglow with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?
One of the best books like Severance about isolation and the ills of the world, My Year of Rest and Relaxation attempts to answer this question. Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Ottessa Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be.
Check Out Our My Year Of Rest And Relaxation Book Review
The Employees – Olga Ravn
The crew of the Six-Thousand Ship consists of those who were born and those who were made. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew is perplexed to find itself becoming deeply attached to them, and human and humanoid employees alike start aching for the same things: warmth and intimacy. Loved ones who have passed. Shopping and child-rearing. Our shared, far-away Earth, which now only persists in memory.
Gradually, the crew members come to see their work in a new light, and each employee is compelled to ask themselves whether their work can carry on as before – and what it means to be truly living. Like Severance, The Employees probes into what it means to be human, while simultaneously delivering an overdue critique of a life governed by work and the logic of productivity.
The Book Of M – Peng Shepherd
One afternoon at an outdoor market in India, a man’s shadow disappears – an occurrence science cannot explain. He is only the first. The phenomenon spreads like a plague, and while those afflicted gain a strange new power, it comes at a horrible cost: the loss of all their memories. Ory and his wife Max have escaped the Forgetting so far by hiding in an abandoned hotel deep in the woods. Their life almost appears normal, until Max’s shadow disappears.
Knowing that the more she forgets, the more dangerous she will become to Ory, Max runs away. But Ory refuses to give up the time they have left together. Desperate to find Max before her memory disappears completely, he follows her trail across a perilous, unrecognisable world. As they journey, each searches for answers.
Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind – Molly McGhee
Jobless, behind on his student loan payments, and a self-declared failure, the only thing Jonathan Abernathy has in abundance is debt. When a government loan forgiveness program offers him a job he can literally do in his sleep, he thinks he’s found his big break. That is, until he finds himself auditing the dreams of white-collar workers, flagging their anxieties and preoccupations for removal.
As Abernathy finds his footing in this new role, reality and morality begin to warp around him. Soon, the line between life and work, right and wrong, even sleep and consciousness begins to blur. At once tender, startling, and deeply funny, Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind is one of the best books to read after Severance if you want another piercing critique of late-stage capitalism and its true cost.
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The Last One – Alexandra Oliva
It begins with a reality TV show. Twelve contestants are sent into the woods to face challenges that will test the limits of their endurance. While they are out there, something terrible happens. Cut off from society, the contestants know nothing of it. When one of them – a young woman the show’s producers call Zoo – happens upon the devastation, she can imagine only that it is a part of the game.
Alone and disoriented, Zoo is heavy with doubt regarding the life she left behind. Staggering countless miles across unfamiliar territory, Zoo must summon all her survival skills – and learn new ones as she goes. But as her emotional and physical reserves dwindle, she grasps that the real world might have been altered in terrifying ways – and her ability to parse the charade will be either her triumph or her undoing.
The Dog Stars – Peter Heller
Hig, bereaved and traumatised after a global disaster, has three things left to live for – his dog, Jasper, his aggressive but helpful neighbour, and his Cessna aeroplane. He’s just about surviving, so long as he only takes his beloved plane for short journeys and saves his remaining fuel.
But just once, he picks up a message from another pilot, and eventually the temptation to find out who else is alive becomes irresistible. So he takes his plane over the horizon, knowing that he won’t have enough fuel to get back. What follows is scarier and more life-affirming than he could have imagined, and his story, The Dog Stars, is a book unlike any you have ever read.
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Immaculate Conception – Ling Ling Huang
Enka meets Mathilde in art school and is instantly drawn to her. Mathilde makes art that feels truly original, and Enka – trying hard to prove herself in this fiercely competitive world – pours everything into their friendship. But when Mathilde’s fame and success cause her to begin drifting away, Enka becomes desperate to keep her close.
Enter SCAFFOLD. Purported to enhance empathy, this cutting-edge technology could allow Enka to inhabit Mathilde’s mind and access her memories, artistic inspirations, and deep-seated trauma. Undergoing this procedure would link Enka and Mathilde forever. But at what cost? Like Severance, Immaculate Conception is a portrait of connection that captures the tenuous line between love and possession that will linger with you long after the final page.
Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
