In a fictionalized but accurate New York City, Candace Chen is living her life, working at Spectra overseeing the publication of books in the Bible division, loving her boyfriend Jonathan--in flashbacks. In the present, she is traveling with a band of survivors of Shen Fever toward "The Facility." We learn about Candace's background, having immigrated to the U.S. at age 6. We feel the conflict between her Chinese origin and her very American upbringing. We watch as the world is slowly consumed by a fungal pandemic which basically turns most of the world into zombies which repeatedly perform the tasks they performed in life, until they quietly pass away of malnutrition (or are helped along in the process).
Candace is the satirical millennial, working at a job which isn't her passion but which she is good at; continuing to go to work long after the rest of the world has abandoned Times Square because she has been promised an obscene amount of severance pay if she sticks around (and stays healthy enough) to collect. I don't want to give too much away, but at some point she does leave New York, does find more survivors on the road, does protect a life-changing secret. It could not have been more bizarre to be reading descriptions of overrun hospitals, emptying businesses, quiet streets in major cities while the exact same thing is happening outside of our doors (but in an odd way, also comforting knowing that our measures against Covid-19 seem to be having more of an impact than that in the novel). A good book to read in front of the fireplace on a "shelter in place" weekend. (YA warning--definite adult situations).
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