If you watch Severance on Apple TV Plus, you’re familiar with Ricken Hale’s self-help book, The You You Are: A Spiritual Biography of You. No spoilers here, but if you’re interested in augmenting your Severance viewing by reading the pivotal book, now you can download it for free.
On Jan. 31, Apple released the eight-chapter, 39-page version of The You You Are on Apple Books, where you can download it as a weird accompaniment to the intriguing show. It’s also available as an audiobook, read by actor Michael Chernus, who plays Hale.
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Chernus also appears on the book’s cover, against an orange-red background that is bound to remind readers of other similar books. (Dianetics, anyone?) His character has written four other self-help books, but this is the only freebie.
The promo text for the book plays right along, bragging that the book “guides you on a brave journey of self-learnedness,” and that it’s an “invitation to merge with your true ‘You.'”
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When you do download the book, it begins with a letter from the fictional author himself, in which he thanks you for reading, and notes that “events beyond my control” have stopped him from releasing the whole book, but he’s sharing the first eight chapters. The book then begins with a literal bang, starting with the sentence, “It’s said that as a child, Wolfgang Mozart killed another boy by slamming his head in a piano.” (He didn’t.)
Readers/viewers seem to be playing along with the concept, with one commenting on the Apple Books reviews page, “Dr. Hale is a true visionary with an unparalleled mind. If I could activate the Overtime Contingency so that all the Innies could have a chance to meet this generation’s Shakespeare in person, I would.”
