Two years after its publication, the book was hailed as prescient for its canny descriptions of a global disease originating in China and subsequent political chaos. This subdued style is recognizable from Severance, Ma’s 2018 bestselling debut novel about a viral pandemic called Shen Fever that traps those it infects in nostalgic routines. Nothing about her flat, spare language signals that a drug that makes the user invisible, or a pregnancy condition in which a tiny, grasping fetal arm drops out from the mother’s vagina, is a shift away from the known universe. (Well, almost-another story details interspecies sex with a yeti.) Elsewhere in the collection, her plots move just a half-step away from reality, integrating fantastical elements so seamlessly that they almost escape notice. The story’s obvious satire of LA’s moneyed class is the closest Ma gets to exaggerating for effect. The charming idiosyncrasies of one, a young love, once made her laugh the physical abuse of the other has left a lasting mark, deep as a bone bruise.

The husband, a match of convenience found on, is a blank outline who speaks only in dollar signs, but two of the woman’s ex-boyfriends still remind her of real emotion.

On the husband’s dime, they while away the hours indulging in the city’s bougie diversions: Barney’s, LACMA, Moon Juice. Her 100 ex-boyfriends reside there, too, to keep her company during the day. Moneybags husband and their two children. A woman lives in a multi-winged Los Angeles mansion with her Mr. The collection opens with a housewife’s reverie.

Bliss montage stories ling ma