Passage

Rating:
Summary: Be careful -- very depressing
Review: Potential readers should know that while this book may keep your attention, it may also induce a haunting melancholy for some time to come. The last hundred or so pages are heart-breaking and painful. Sometimes Willis writes jaunty, upbeat books, and sometimes she doesn't (Doomsday Book). This one is another of those NOT-upbeat books of hers.

Just giving fair warning to anyone who doesn't exactly need a dose of depressing right now.

Rating:
Summary: A Fantastic Thrill-Ride Maze of a Journey
Review: When I first picked up this book I thought it looked interesting. Yes, it's long, and there's lots of technical jargon- but if you watch "ER" or read lots of medical type thriller books- it's not too hard to follow. I found Ed's ramblings about the Yorktown to be more annoying than the length of the book.

The length of the book is important for 2 reasons.

1) We really learn to fall in love with the main characters; Joanna, Richard, Maisie, Kit, and Veille.

2) Willis leaves plot-bunny breadcrumb hints for us to follow that allow the readers to frustratingly understand what's going on at the end of the book when the characters do not. Each revelation blows both reader and characters away.

The metaphors mix beautifully with the science. The scientific mind clashing w/and trying to understand the metaphysical in this book make it utterly fascinating to read.

I've been doling out reading bits of this book a few chapters at a time for a couple of months, and today I plowed through the last part of it in one sitting. I worried, I cried, and I laughed while reading this. Through all of the scientific muddle, I fell in love with the entire cast of characters and was very sorry to see it end, I didn't want to let go.

I'm now off to read more of her books- this book has made me a Willis fan.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty bad.
Review: At first I couldn't believe this book was by the woman who wrote Doomsday Book (which I loved). But after reading reviews for both books on Amazon I had top admit that Doomsday had some of the same flaws (most notably incredibly stupid, ineffective one-dimensional characters), to a much lessor degree. I also found the book to be incredibly boring. The pace of information-gathering is soooo slow that I started to forget what had already been revealed. It started to seem like I was reading a description of the same incident over and over. The eceptionally crude, black and white characterizations became increasingly difficult to stomach as the book wore on. OK, you don't like Dr. Mandrake. Can we forget about him now Joanna and stop acting like a third-grader running from a cooties victim? Unlike everyone else in the book Maisie, the sick girl, is amusing so it's hard to understand why the protagonists who are supposedly rooting for her expend so much energy avoiding her. Ultimately I felt the "answer" revealed toward the end was somewhat poignant, esp. in light of 9/11. I actually figured that that was where she had gotten the idea and checked the publication date. There was obviously a great deal of thought and care that went into the book, but nothing could redeem this book from the boring pace and unappealing characters. But Wills does deserve credit for coming up with an interesting idea. I just wish she would have presented it better.

Rating:
Summary: Finally, a satisfying theory about NDEs
Review: The other reviewers have satisfactorily covered the plot of this book, so I'll skip it. What happens after death is the mystery of the ages, and the near death experience (NDE) has been used as "proof" that there is life after death. Willis's hypothesis concerning NDEs makes the most sense of any I've ever heard. Of course, it makes some people uncomfortable, because it's not easy to believe that death is the end of the road, and we'd like to cling to any shred of "evidence" of life after death. But humans are not the only self-aware animals on earth who have feelings and memories, but somehow we have not heard of mainstream, basically normal people exclaiming that they have seen the ghost of an elephant. Whenever anyone talks of having had an NDE, they really never do supply any information that they couldn't have learned from another source, and they always claim to have seen loved ones -- a beloved grandmother, a dead spouse, a cherished uncle -- at the end of the tunnel. No one ever wakes up and says, "No, I saw my mother-in-law at the end of that tunnel. I hate my mother-in-law. When I contemplated spending eternity with her my soul ran screaming back into my body." I can't reveal Willis's theory without spoiling the plot, but suffice it to say that one clue is the physical movements of the characters in physical space -- the way they change location, moving through the maze of the hospital, with its different functions, in order to accomplish some goal. In this book, as in life, what happens to the body happens to the mind. Even the way that this psychologist maddeningly avoids a total, bombastic moron who is messing up her research illustrates Willis's theory.

Although it serves a literary purpose, that running, well, running, of the main character from the man who is making her professional life a nightmare is the only quarrel I have with this book -- that a psychologist would avoid confrontation by running and hiding. There are less maladaptive ways to avoid confrontation, if that is the goal, than allowing someone you hate to force you to hide in corners and interfere with your day. The only explanation I could see for this motif in the book is that the bad guy has the support of the hospital, and she may be concerned that if she upsets him he would retaliate by going to the board of trustees of the hospital and having her removed, somehow. If this is true, Willis should have explicitly stated this instead of leaving the reader fuming, once again, at the infuriating, bizarre cowardice of the main character. I will say that, in my profession, I have interviewed thousands of people in matters of varying degrees of urgency, and she captures the differing levels of witness helpfulness (or not) brilliantly.

A great read.

Rating:
Summary: Loved this book!
Review: This is truly an extraordinary book--the kind that makes you stay up late to finish because you absolutely can't set it down.
I got truly lost in this book--it is a fascinating, disturbing and mind stretching novel. The characters are very well drawn--witty, human, touching. I loved this book.

Rating:
Summary: An interesting novel covering interesting plots
Review: I figured the back of the book looked interesting, so took a chance and picked up Passage. I was very pleased that I did. Willis's writing style is refined, but not overly edited. In other words she tells her story with the poise that her lead character Joanna posseses. The themes in the book are subtly explored for the most part, i.e. Willis resists temptation to sermonize too overtly over her own beliefs. My favorite characteristic of the novel was the refreshingly lack of saccharine romances that find its way into too many of the best thrillers. A male and female character can have feelings for each other without neccesarily consumating their love in physical manner. The only real critique I have of this novel is its length, Ms. Willis suffers from a mild case of Dickenitus using pages of description where a paragraph or two will paint vivid image for reader. In conclussion I can not say I'm a rapid Willis fan after reading this book, but will explore some of her other novels having enjoyed this one.

Rating:
Summary: Simply AWFUL
Review: I saw this book in hardback and thought it looked good so I waited for the paperback edition with high hopes. BOY WAS I DISAPPOINTED. This is the WORST book I have ever read. It doesn't even get vaguely exciting until around page 660 and its 780 pages long. What was this writer thinking? The book talks a lot about how time can be expanded or collapsed, well the characters in this novel sure do know how to expand it, ad nausuem.

The main character is supposed to be a psychologist who works in a hospital, however, she never really works. Her idea of work is dashing around from patient to patient asking the same questions over and over again, and finding out very little of interest for literally hundreds of pages. If that isn't bad enough, she is pursued by a one dimensional character called Mr. Mandrake who as an author of New Age books has been given free reign to endlessly page the staff and harrass the patients for information. To make matters worse, the Doctor runs from this man for the whole story, literally hiding and changing her plans continually in order to avoid....what???? telling him off? Aren't psychologists supposed to have superior confrontational skills? She doesn't even have a working knowledge of Alzheimers and seems to know way more about brain physiology than psychology.

Not one relationship in this book is beleivable or satisfying. Characters interact ONLY through their need to give or get information. They announce their concern for each other rather than showing it and then there are the endless trite comments about capturing a cute doctor...That forms the core of the psychologists relationship with her best friend...Give me a break!

The decisions characters make and the actions they take are equally mysterious and inexplicable. Apparently this author didn't have time for foreshadowing. As I said...time is greatly expanded but not by character development or even significant plot advancement. You live in the main character's head and are treated to literally every event in her day....no matter how boring. One dimensional patients abound and their monologs become so predictable that you turn the page the minute you see their tag line.

If that isn't bad enough there are endless descriptions of how maze-like the hospital is, page after page of hallways, wet paint, catwalks, short cuts and elevators.

The worst part of the experience is getting to the end and going...HUH?

Rating:
Summary: Where was the editor?
Review: I just finished reading this book- all 700+ pages of it. I don't normally pay attention to page length, but I kept having to reassure myself I was getting closer to the end. Where to start? Before this I read Belwether by Connie Willis- a funny, interesting book. So i picked up this one thinking it would be as good. Instead, at around 400 pages in, it became unbearable. The narrative was long, rambling, confusing, and i found myself wishing the narator would get some counseling, or just shut up. She did neither. I slogged through the middle, hoping the story would tie together or at least lessen my frustration. Nope. The end was open-ended, contrite and completely unsatisfying. Don't waste any brain power on this one, it's not worth it.

Rating:
Summary: Remarkably original, but badly in need of editing
Review: A strangely engrossing, although not altogether successful novel of one woman's search for meaning in the study of N.D.E.s (Near Death Experiences). Our heroine teams up with another young doctor who has learned to simulate N.D.E.s in the laboratory. The results of their experiments are certainly surprising enough, although they build up so slowly that you'll see it coming long before it hits. In fact this book's biggest weakness is surely that things move far, far too slowly - almost in slow motion, one might say. Coupled with the glacial plot is the wearisome repetition, particularly the running gags about the lunchroom, and evading Dr. Mandrake, and the difficulty finding one's way around the hospital. Sure they're funny the first couple times, and these scenes do help to dramatize a valid point, but when all's said and done the novel runs hundreds of pages longer than it should have, and the repetition only exacerbates the reader's frustration.

Still, the plot line is so bizarre that one is irresistibly drawn into it. Sure, we see what's happening, but how is Willis going to explain it? In the final analysis, the explanation is perhaps a bit wanting, but more annoying is the way Willis drags the book on for another 150 pages or so even after the big dénouement, trying to sneak in one more plot twist, which many readers will have seen through much, much earlier.

While not wishing to spoil any surprises, this book might well be recommended to buffs of major historical catastrophes. For the rest of us, Willis would be well advised to write a short story version of this tale, so that fans of off-the-wall sci-fi/fantasy could appreciate the remarkably original idea she has come up with without spending two weeks poring over this too-often tedious tome.

Rating:
Summary: Enjoyed the book
Review: I loved this book and couldn't put it down till I was finished reading it. However, there are a few complaints. First complaint is that the writer dwelt on the complicated routing through the maze of passages in the hospital a little too much and another that their volunteers were always breaking appointments and none of them seemed reliable in any way at all. That was a little overdone. My biggest critisism though is that the characters seemed entirely too selfish. Joanna and Richard both spent a lot of time together and yet they didn't really have a romance. They mostly talked about work and spent all their time working. Joanna seemed to take more than she gave to people. Most of the characters in the book were lucky if they got a few words from her outside of what she wanted. The greatest part of this story was the little girl maisie. You cant read this book without falling in love with her.