Passage

Rating:
Summary: A little too long
Review: I think she could have chopped 200 pages out of this book and still kept a good story. It starts off slow; you're well into the book before any major plot developments start to happen. The main problem, like others have said, is that the "comedy" stretches out way too long. At least three pages are spent descibing each character's frustrating journey to get from one side of the hospital to the other. And the WWII veteran's longwinded stories can be easily skimmed over. I understand that Willis was trying to convey a sense of frustration as Joanna searches for answers, but the reader tends to become frustrated after a while - the book is not very fast paced. She uses technical science terms without explaining them to the reader, which bothered me. I don't know anything about brain chemistry or neurons, and I felt lost when the characters discussed them in the course of their research. Also, the obnoxious characters never get their comeuppance. I kept waiting for Richard or Vielle to punch Mandrake or Joanna's sister in the mouth. (I certainly wanted to!) But they just seem to ignore them.
That being said, I don't want to seem completely negative about this book. Connie Willis is a fine writer, and a fine writer's weaker books are better than a bad writer's best ones. (If that makes sense). The story would be great for an "X-Files" movie, so go ahead and check it out if you are a fan of good writers, but don't expect to be blown away.

Rating:
Summary: lose 300 pages and maybe...
Review: This book was a 400 page book that somebody told her to lengthen to 780. The continual explanations of the routes that characters take through the hospital are exasperating and the constant avoidance that every chracter practices had me tearing my hair out. She wastes at least a hundred pages telling us how the chracters avoid each other. Do adults behave this way somewhere in the world? The final 200 pages are a complete recap of the 200 before them and by the end, I didn't care about the characters anymore.
We are constantly led to believe that characters who have just met form life long, deep, enduring friendships in a few weeks. The characters are completely one dimensional and seem to have no life outside of plotting their next route throught the maze-like hospital or ducking into the ever present stair wells to avoid talking to someone they don't want to see. The symbolism is forced on us and is not the least bit subtle.
Even Maisie, the child heart patient is written so as to be copmpletely annoying. There is at least 75 pages of filler with this character alone and by the end she completely loses her charm. The interaction between Maisie and the rest of the characters began to remind me of an episode of Father Knows Best, where everything the children do is viewed as cute and endearing. this child pages emergency room doctors under false pretenses and they laugh at her resourcefulness.
This was my second Willis novel and I have to say, this attempt didn't come close to living up to the expectaions created by Doomsday Book.
Save your money and more importantly your time and try Doomsday Book instead.

Rating:
Summary: Even good writers have less than perfect days
Review: I'm disappointed. This book could have been cropped 200 pages at least. I liked the concept, and it would make a good movie(because it would be edited). As always, Ms. Willis seems to do an inordinate amount of grand research on her books, in this case, Near Death Experiences. On the other hand, the book was too long, not as humorous, and achieved only one-dimensional character development. The constant motif of going up and down hallways and passages got longwinded and overabused. I GET it; when one has an NDE, there is a long tunnel. May I suggest, Lincoln's Dreams, or the Doomsday Book instead, or for pure enjoyment, To Say Nothing of the Dog.

Rating:
Summary: Haunting and Elegant
Review: I am a huge Connie Willis fan. I own nearly all her books. I love her so much I dragged my father into my obsession by reading Lincoln's Dreams outloud to him. Three books later, we were looking for another one to read. When I saw a hardbacked copy of Passage in a used bookstore, I knew this would be our next book.

We are enjoying it enourmously. Though Willis admitidly goes overboard with the missed connections and maze-like hospital halls, there is a sort of desperation in it, a philosophical parallel to the frantic process of dying. It is that same sense of running out of time that infuses the entire book. Johanna, the book's protagonist, pours herself into her work in hopes of helping the desperately sick, very precocious nine-year-old Maisie and Kit, the sad young woman who takes care of her alzhiemer-stricken uncle. Her workaholic, scientifically-minded partner Richard and the fanatical author Maurice Mandrake form the extremes in the field of Near Death Experience study. Johanna is comfortably in the middle - not convinced that the NDE is heaven while still being skeptical of Richard's chemical theories. But it isn't until Johanna herself becomes a subject in Richard's experiments will she learn the terrifying truth behind death.

Diving into the morbid subject of death, Passage could easily fail. But it doesn't. It is fascinating and heartbreaking, well worth the full five-hundred odd pages.

Rating:
Summary: Gripping yet haunting
Review: Never having read any of Willis' work before I went into this book curious bout the subject but with no expectations as to how it would turn out. I can seriously Say I was not disappointed at all... in fact I was left more than a little haunted by everything transpiring in the book. Her characters to me were all believeable in what they experienced, so much so that I felt connected to them in their hopes, fears, triumphs and sorrows. Her use of symbolism throughout was also very creative and inventive... lending to and supporting all the central themes.... Death, Life... Philosophy, and Love.
All in all I couldn't put "Passage" down finishing it in less than a week... Everyone shuld definitely read it! But you may need a hug at the end....

Rating:
Summary: Flatline
Review: A major disappointment. The tremendously talented Connie Willis writing a novel on near-death experiences (NDEs) promises much. With her signature mix of wit, morbitity, and intellectual acuity, one expects great things -- but the result (despite referencing and disparaging the film) is a really, really long, dull knockoff of eighties camp classic Flatliners.

A big problem: the "wit." Not only do the seemingly endless parade of eccentrics chatter for pages at a time, virtual none of them are funny past the first appearance. Each is a one joke stick figure, yet recurs endlessly. Yes, the characters are annoyed by them, too, but come on -- literally hundreds of pages are given over to this stuff.

Sadly, the main characters suffer the same 'one trait stick figure' problem. Heroine Joanne is somewhat appealing in that she shares the dry, exasperated good sense and competence of Willis protagonists, but she has no life outside the 'mystery' beyond her woefully cliched mantalk with stick figure ER doc best friend. The less said about theoretical romantic interest Dr. Wright (Dr. Right -- get it!?) the better.

Poor characters needn't sink a medical mystery thriller. Many do fine without them. The biggest problem with Passage is, unaccountably, the biggest problem with Flatliners: are we really supposed to believe that the dreamlike, suggestive impressions of patients drugged to simulate a near death experience have any objective meaning? It's absurd. These are clearly subjective events. Willis acknowledges this at first, debunking NDE mysticism and focusing on brain chemistry, but by midway this rigor is all but forgotten, as the not so riveting mystery of characters trying to remember crucial details from their NDEs is stretched out over hundreds of pages. The final solution returns to science, but after what we've been through to get there, warrants no more than a shrug.

A interesting twist occurs around page 550, and given the subject matter one cannot help but keep reading, but the end is both predictable and a sad turn into the traditional NDE mysticism that for 750 previous pages the book has been mocking.

Willis is a terrific writer -- check out the wonderous Doomsday Book or the less ambitious but terribly charming To Say Nothing of the Dog -- but none of her talents are shown to good effect here.

Rating:
Summary: it's just too long
Review: The fascinating possibilites raised are not done justice because it's just too long and literally cluttered with dead-ends. She could have written a brilliant novella and captured the climax just as well.

Rating:
Summary: Beware young scientists, especially women.
Review: Connie Willis generally distinguishes herself in
the way she blends history and science fiction. I
thoroughly enjoyed The Doomsday Book and in
comparison, would give it five stars.

This book, however, was not nearly as good. I was
also frightened at times reading The Doomsday Book, and
also almost never put it down. Characters we loved died
in that book, we were exhausted at the end,
but we walked away grateful for having read the book.

This book was captivating enough to make me finish it, but
I am very sorry that I read it.

Joanna Lander is a young research scientists whose work
comes very near to a breakthrough when it is snatched away
from her and her life is ruined. Perhaps Connie Willis thought
that some of the good that came out of Joanna's tragedy would
nullify the tragic loss. It did not.

I am a young Ph.D. starting out my career in research science
and this is one of the most depressing books I have read.
Connie Willis betrayed me and all young female scientists.
Gone was the heroine of the Doomsday book --> here we have
Dr. Wright, who never showed any real affection for Joanna,
walking away with the prize. Another woman has had the
glory of successful research taken by a male coworker.
Congrats, Connie. You wrote the same old horrible story.

Rating:
Summary: What happens after death?
Review: We know the scenario by heart-- in a near-death experience, the person floats over their body, sees a brightly lit tunnel, meets loved ones, is often pulled back abruptly into themselves with a renewed feeling of purpose.

This book begins with this idea, then wonders, what if? What else happens? What about if you could simulate the Near Death experience in a controlled environment, and figure out what exactly is going on physiologically so that every culture seems to have these similar experiences?

There are some fabulous moments in this book, and a few that I didn't feel met the potential. When the participants in the research study begin to quit, I imagined a sinister reason that never really panned out to my satisfaction (there is an explanation, I just thought it was less fulfilling than I'd hoped.) One really good element is the "last words" at the beginning of each chapter-- they make you really think about what happens to people when they die-- once we get around the traditional religious and cultural assumptions, what does the body/person feel? What causes this?

But the reason this book gets four, rather than five, stars, is that the climax of the book seemed to come about halfway through, then the rest (200 pages or so) felt like an too slow "denouement" that just went on and on and on and on. I wanted the story to wrap up-- and it took too long for it to happen. Since I'm a really fast reader, I was sort of okay, but my husband, who reads more slowly & deliberately, was bogged down a bit.

Still, it's a good book, and other Connie Willis works are really worth your time. They are all thought-provoking, the characters are likable and usually fairly well-rounded, and the ideas quite interesting. I also love the "pop culture" references throughout the book-- since I'm kind of a "quote movies & books" nerd in regular conversation, I love it when an author does this too.

Rating:
Summary: A somewhat interesting look into the mind's inner workings
Review: I was completely underwhelmed with this story from an author that I'd heard such good things about. I kept thinking as I read that the story had it the limited creativity and imagination of a Lifetime made-for-TV-movie.

I gave the book two stars instead of just one because of the interesting way Willis detailed how memory works and how the human brain deals with death.

Unless you have a dying need to read fiction related to Near Death Experiences, I'd pass on this book.