I generally enjoyed this book. It detailed the absurdity and critiqued capitalism while being understated in its doing so - if you are not reading too closely, the writing as it wouldn't necessarily register as a criticism of the system, but just a reflection of how things are. But the symbols and moments are there: Shen Fever arises out of manufacturing in Shenzen; people are defined by their consumption of commodities; the Bible, fully commodified by the narrator; dangerous working conditions in manufacturing, etc.

The one major part of the book that didn't resonate with me is the Bob/present story line. It felt aimless. There were several inconsistent invocations of people just mysteriously getting fevered at convenient times in the narration (most egregiously in the ending with Bob). I didn't really understand Bob's point in the book. I got pissed at the whole imprisonment episode, which is rightfully so, but worse, it broke my suspension of disbelief. Why did everyone in the group just follow Bob as leader? This half of the narration overall felt disjointed.

My favorite part of the book was the descent of New York into apocalypse. It felt incredibly poignant as Candace stayed until she was one of the last few in the city. This felt exactly how a pandemic would go down in the city, in about the opposite way that one would think apocalypse usually happens. The city burned slowly, ending with not a bang but a whimper.

Note (August 2020): talk about eerie timing. I finished reading this right when Covid-19 began circulating in Wuhan.

How did Shen Fever New York compare to Covid-19 New York? Thankfully, Covid didn't turn 99% of the city into zombies. Shen Fever felt more gradual in the book. Covid came down immediately like a heavy blanket that muffled the city. In both cases, the silence in the streets throughout was unnerving.