There’s a special kind of adversity in having a famous namesake. It’s an existential crisis, and only a rare few avoid becoming a “not to be confused with” footnote on Wikipedia (shout-out to Michael B. Jordan and James Cameron’s Avatar ).  Severance wasn’t so lucky. I’m not talking about the prestige Apple TV series . I’m talking about the debut novel by my fellow Chicagoan Ling Ma , which not only predates the show but deserves just as much mainstream attention. As it happens, the two Severances share more than just a name. Both works tinker with memory as their core theme. While the Adam Scott show wrestles with the surreal scenario of splitting one’s consciousness between “innie” at the office and “outie” at home, Ma’s 2018 novel is a clever reimagination of the zombie apocalypse through the lens of millennial burnout.…