Severance — Vocabulary
Ling Ma
(Edited)

The city had contracted Sentinel to protect public institutions from looters.p.255.9alternate pages26 more

Because these symptoms are often mistaken for the common cold, patients are often unaware they have contracted Shen Fever.p.19.2alternate pages26 more

I didn't elaborate that they were both deceased, and that the family coffers or whatever would last me just long enough—maybe, say, for the next ten, fifteen years—for me to be comfortable with not working,p.50.3alternate pages6 more

What surprised me in Hong Kong, however, was how many iterations of the same thing were available. ... Nowhere else was there such an elaborate gradient between the real and the fake.p.100.3alternate pages6 more

All through the morning, church bells rang at times corresponding to the moments when the planes hit and when each building fell.p.212.7alternate pages3 more

Correspondence with Spectra Hong Kong was sluggish and infrequent, as all Spectra offices had reduced their in-house staff.p.233.7alternate pages3 more

This narrative, then, is not about any individual entity, per se, but about an abstract force: the force of the mob, of mob mentality.p.29.5alternate pages8 more

I thought about conveying what the 911 operator had told me, that it was no longer safe to work in the building.p.251.9alternate pages5 more

Don’t you think it’s strange Ashley became fevered in her childhood house? It's like nostalgia has something to do with it.p.143.9alternate pages6 more

On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your work quality? ... Very effective, Effective, Neutral, Ineffective, Very ineffective.p.215.7alternate pages5 more

Now we are all, in this congregation, first—and second-generation immigrants.p.179.2alternate pages5 more

Yes, I speak Mandarin with my parents, I answered, thankful that the language does not require tenses distinguishing past, present, and future.p.87.7alternate pages2 more

This narrative, then, is not about any individual entity, per se, but about an abstract force: the force of the mob, of mob mentality.p.29.6alternate pages2 more

Jonathan once told me about the rivers of Illinois, how the land adjacent to a Great Lake is rippled with rivers.p.284.4alternate pages1 more

The light glimmers out of a bank of trees, which obscures a river embankment.p.284.4alternate pages7 more

One of Jonathan's constant critiques of me was that I didn't keep up with the news enough, but I wondered if he wasn't overinformed, deep-diving into obscure articles and message boards, seeing connections that weren't there.p.200.7alternate pages7 more

Later-stage symptoms include signs of malnourishment, lapse of hygiene, bruising on the skin, and impaired motor coordination.p.19.3alternate pages4 more

A full minute lapsed before I started crying.p.47.9alternate pages4 more

Often the factories produce an overrun of prototypes and sell them illicitly.p.100.8alternate pages7 more

Within the following year, almost all of the senior staff had been laid off, given their diminished severance payouts.p.137.1alternate pages3 more