Sometimes I drape myself over him and I get the physical comfort of not being alone.” Ma’s figurative language sometimes seems too extreme for its purpose, as when the narrator reports giving birth to two children, “one gang-bangingly after the other,” but overall, “Los Angeles” is both incisively comic and emotionally affecting. “Los Angeles” moves from acerbic quips-LA is “not so much a city as a series of urban planning decisions made without foresight”-to unsparing reflections on human relationships: “The Husband is a resting place. Aaron represents meaningful connection-he was the only boyfriend that she truly loved-while Adam abused her and so changed her irrevocably. The ex-boyfriends symbolize, tantalizingly and threateningly, the alternate lives that she could have lived.
Those are just the As.” She lives in material comfort but fixates on her past. The narrator of “Los Angeles,” who meets her rich, emotionally absent husband on, shares a mansion with him, her two children, and her one hundred ex-boyfriends: “Aaron. Both depict a protagonist confronting the fallout of an abusive relationship with a man named Adam, but “Los Angeles” is absurdist and bitingly satirical, while “Oranges” dwells on the mundane in a matter-of-fact tone. The first two stories, “Los Angeles” and “Oranges,” most clearly demonstrate this tendency. Readers who appreciate the incisive humor, penetrating social critique, and generic mashup of Severance will be delighted by Bliss Montage, Ma’s first collection of short stories, which mixes the absurd and fantastical with moving evocations of the intimate and everyday.īliss Montage’s stories range from the realist (“Oranges,” “Peking Duck”) to the absurdist (“Los Angeles,” “Yeti Lovemaking,” “Tomorrow”) to the gently fantastical (“G,” “Office Hours,” “Returning”), yet the stories read like variations on a theme-alternate (if wildly different) lives that the same person could have lived. Severance received rave reviews upon publication and resurged in public discourse in 2020, when an actual pandemic transformed the world. A tale of a pandemic-induced zombie apocalypse, Severance is also a novel of immigrant experience and a portrait of millennial malaise.
Ling Ma’s 2018 debut novel Severance captured the literary world’s attention with its original blending of genres.
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