Warning there are spoilers*
Candace is struggling and trying to find the calmness and structure of her early life in China with her parents.
This story deals with the the story lines of Candace’s parents being in America after immigrating from China, Candace the summer before she starts her job, Candace 5 years later, the beginning to ‘the end’ and ‘the end’ in the present sense.
The book does a great job of “filling in” the story as we go through each chapter and as you start the book you start to think that you are going into a office politics kind of story but as you venture through the story you see how its just the beginning.
One of the biggest over arching messages you see through out the story is the feeling of being trapped and what it does to your mental health. Whether that be through Candace’s Mother coming to America and feeling trapped after her husband tells her they will never go back and she is to live the rest of her days in a country she does not want to be in and what that does to her mother of making her into a different person more retreated into herself and angry that it brings pain to her daughter. With that you see the overarching ideal of once you feel that way what will you do and who will you become?
The reason I start with this point even though we don’t get to this till further into the book is because this issue brings a lot of understanding to why our main character acts the way she does and her background.
Candace is a anxious and sad person.
And because of this she acts in some would say frustrating ways but they are realistic to degrees of trauma.
Candace states that she remembers very early on in her life the sense of calm and peace she felt that her mum provided for her before they left to America without her and when the change happened it was very jarring to such a young child. Candace went from being calm and having a sweet mother to throwing tantrums and not being cared for as much and being restricted from the life she lived so much earlier. Even to the outsider that is a traumatic thing for a child to feel especially if the child is without their caring parents. You can see the self soothing Candace try’s to do as a kid after the lady from down the hall yells and hurts her.
But then you see the next part of Candace’s life in where she gets to reunite with her parents and her source of comfort and happiness in her mother had changed she was firm and harsh. Which can be jarring to a child but at least with her mum being rough with punishments at least she had some solace in her father.
You may be asking but why is the above important? Well its because this shows you that even though earlier in the book you are bothered or just taken aback by Candace’s actions you start to peal back the layers of her life and what makes her tick. Candace is the product of trauma a child who had a happy set of years affected by her parents who seek out a better life in an unfamiliar and very different place. The environment is hard for her mother and due to that even if the choice is incorrect its still one she makes out her mothers own hard times. You start to see the nuances of the human condition and the way life can morph you.
From all this foundation laid out through the book you start to make sense of Candace’s avoidance attachment and need for comfort through what ever necessary even though if these things are not good for her. Which is what will be evident for a majority of the rest of the book.
The summer before she start her job Candace meets Jonathan a man that gets her and loves her as we go through the book. Before this you see that Candace was very avoidant with men only wanting them for one thing and keeping a rotation a men in the loop. This shows the sense of wanting comfort but not wanting to talk or be close anyone. But one of these men care for her and want her around that he even helps her land a job with his brother in publishing.
Publishing. Bibles. Candace need comfort and a way to feel that is through routine and understanding and this is what you see when she spends 5 years working very hard at bible publishing. This little nest of hers that she has created with a partner Jonathan who gets her is the closest she seems to happy to a degree.
Until Jonathan states he wants to leave New York City. This is where you see Candace’s avoidance at a high again where she disconnect from him. Even though he is still in the city she avoids him and all his calls and texts/emails. This passes a couple weeks in where we start to see the talks of a fever, Shen Fever, this is where almost everyone can relate you start to see the warning signs of a global pandemic.
This pandemic and its signs before the intensity feels familiar so you feel tense and anxious as well as you read of Candace and her friends trying to navigate this. But the it gets close to home.
Shen fever can have symptoms like a flu and can take 1 to 4 weeks to show but once you get past the flu like symptoms you get lost in your mind and become stuck in a loop to the point that you don’t clean yourself and you can be without a jaw but still stuck in the loop.
Then it spreads… Jonathan asks Candace to join him and leave but she ignores him and says no and she goes to work where the office is empty due to the fever getting worse and people wanting to stay home but she still comes with her mask on.
ISOLATION
People start to dwindle but she stays with her routine her “comfort”. Jonathan is gone and she is pregnant and never told him. One day in the office she is asked to talk to HR and a main boss to see about staying in the office and make sure work is done and be in office for a very large sum of money until a set date. She accepts almost immediately and we know this as the reader that if she wouldn’t leave with Jonathan then she will continue her routine.
The Contract
There is several people who sign up to do this most people young like her but within two weeks the work dries up and eventually people stop showing up to the point the lobby staff is gone and the last two other people leave and yet Candace stays. Routine. She is alone. Most people in the city is gone and its just her and hired guards around the city, a few other stragglers and the fevered.
Candace moves into her office building and works, well tries to and picks up her original hobby of writing in her blog. It does well till one day people drop off watching, Candace infers probably they are fevered, so she stops. Which stated by someone we meet in her life after she moves on from New York states to her that she was vain and only did the project because of the attention it brought her.
The Cult
Like every apocalypse portrayed in media people go kind of insane after the world collapses. Cults are very easy to fall into especially if you just want to be safe, find comfort and not feel alone. Which is something we know our main character needs. This falls apart pretty quickly and Candace doesn’t do well being controlled which leads her to being locked up in a “cell” of sorts after joining in once to a stalk with others, who two of the three eventually die that day and the other ends up passed in his cell. Our leader of the cult takes “care” of her because she is pregnant but you start to see a decent into insanity at the facility.
‘The End’
One night Candace decides after talking to her mother who has passed after having moments of lapses of normal life she listens to her mother about leaving this group. So that’s what she does and the night that she chooses to leave the leader succumbs to the fever so she is able to escape after rightfully so attacking the man that imprisoned her. She leaves and drives back to the apartment that the father of her baby Jonathan stated was home for him.
My Feelings
This is a beautifully written story that deals with the fall into insanity from all sides of the story. You as the reader then start to question the characters sanity and if they have succumb to the fever or not. But a big theme is a unveiling of pain and love through our main characters life especially when dealing with her mother who she still was at her side when her illness took her mind then her.
You also see the main character trying to make sense of life and the capitalistic society she lives in as she in a way is in the ‘second coming of age’ that you do as you enter the “real world”.
We leave our main character a Chinese American woman who has a life full of life with ups and downs before ‘the end’. This story was so captivating and beautifully written that also embody the vibes of apocalypse media but also a story of a child of immigrants but also has the vibes of our real life pandemic. I will always remember this book.
We leave our main character a Chinese American woman who has a life full of life with ups and downs before ‘the end’. This story was so captivating and beautifully written that also embody the vibes of apocalypse media but also a story of a child of immigrants but also has the vibes of our real life pandemic. I will always remember this book.