Passage

Rating:
Summary: outstanding book
Review: I thought the idea behind this book was fascinating, and unlike a lot of other reviewers, I liked the execution. To me, all of the reviewers who complain that the book is too long are missing the point. Willis is not stupid (obviously) and I'm sure she is aware that many people complain that her books are too long. If she thought that was a problem, she would fix it.

To me, the length of these books conveys Willis's theme of failure to communicate. This is a very realistic theme and it seems many people don't like her dramatization of it. But if Willis were to write shorter stories where the communication happened much more easily, her major point - that meaningful communication between two people can be an extraordinarily difficult endeavor - would be completely lost.

Willis knows that just saying "it's a tragedy how people don't communicate" is a cliche and it's been said so often that no one hears it anymore. So she makes it concrete by such things as the never-ending construction in the hospital. Then people say she is too long. I really believe that's taking her much too literally and missing the entire point of what she's trying to convey.

Willis does not provide the usual SF hero or heroine who saves the world and does 10 impossible things before breakfast. Nor does she write plots that move forward smoothly with few of the disappointments and setbacks that occur in real life. She reflects reality. I think it's hard to see the often mundane nature of reality given so much space in a book. It is boring and people who want plots that move more quickly should look elsewhere. I find a lot of meaning in her description of attempts to communicate that more than justifies the length in my opinion.

Rating:
Summary: A good 400 page book
Review: Unfortunately, this was a 780 page book. There are several boring, long-winded or self-possessed characters in the book which the protagonist, Joanna, seeks to avoid. Connie Willis does a good job of bringing these characters to life. Therein lies the rub: in the same way Joanna hopes to shun these characters the reader develops a similar dislike. Whereas Joanna hides in stairwells, at least the reader can just skip the page.

Two-thirds into the book a plot twist develops in which the reader gets to re-experience the previous 300 pages, again! This lasts several hundred pages as a group of Joanna's friends seek to re-discover what Joanna already discovered. At this point, reading morphs into page scanning.

I had hoped this book would add to my imaginary repertoire of the inner worlds. It left me unfulfilled as it focused on a single metaphor which turned out to be the journey and not the destination. Course, that is true to the book's title: Passage.

I love Willis, Doomsday launched me into a frenzy of reading on The Plague, both fictional and historical. Perhaps Connie set the bar so high I was expecting too much out of Passage.

Rating:
Summary: Superior SF
Review: Connie Willis has never been an easy read. Her books are multilevel, long, often over-written, and filled with a complexity of ideas and language that are unique to SF. If I would choose an author that exemplifies the raisng of traditional SF to the level of literature, I would choose Connie Willis as a prime example. 'Passage' is no exception.
Most high quality literature requires requires a lot from the reader and 'Passage' is no exception. It took me 2 attempts to get into the book. After allowing myself to really attend to the book, I felt greatly rewarded. This is a book that, like oatmeal, will stick with you long after you have consumed it.

Rating:
Summary: You won't be able to put it down
Review: I must admit to not being much of a Connie Willis fan, but from the moment I started reading this book until the end I could *not* put it down. It is quietly gripping, and disturbing in a way that cannot be explained. You have to read it to understand. The only reason I gave it four stars instead of five was that the ending didn't quite live up to the expectations set by the rest of the book.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting premise in need of an editor
Review: I was alternately intrigued and frustrated by this book. The idea, namely research into Near Death Experiences (NDEs) by attempting to recreate them in the lab, is interesting, but the book is overlong. It would have been a much more coherent narrative if a good editor had taken a red pen and cut it by half. There was too much repetition of the same or very similar scenes. Some of the characters were wonderful--Maisie and her mother for instance, but many of Joanna's actions were less than plausible (leaving the hospital repeatedly in the middle of the day on a spur of the moment whim? I don't think so. By the time Joanna realized what the meaning of the Titanic imagery was, it was anticlimactic. I do however disagree with previous reviewers who have accused Willis of denying the spiritual aspects of NDEs--her ending directly contradicts this idea and leaves their ultimate meaning open to the reader's interpretation. What she does criticize, however, is the one size fits all NDE as it is bandied about in popular culture.

Rating:
Summary: An Overdose of Intellectual Arrogance
Review: "Passage" is about Near-Death Experience, a fascinating theme. Ms. Willis has very strong opinions about this subject. Unfortunately she does not defend her ideas with elegance.

Even though there are thousands of documented NDE testimonies today, and 80% of them are remarkably similar in their spiritual connotation, Ms. Willis seems to believe that the professionals who interview NDE patients are the ones who lead them into believing in Afterlife. She hammers this idea into our head from page 1 through page 790.

Connie Willis pictured a world in which people who suffer a NDE are led into misinterpreting their experience by manipulative interviewers. One of the main characters, an author of a bestselling NDE book, forces upon the interviewees a religious interpretation of their NDE in order to sell books. In short, the mountain of NDE testimonies out there (even Mr. Gallup did a major research on this subject) mean nothing. The interviewers are charlatans and the interviewees are fools or fanatics.

Is this a fair representation of reality? Well, Amazon has a search engine. Why don't you do a research over here and see for yourself? There are dozens of books about NDE, some of them written by professionals with impressive credentials. If anything, the medical establishment has a materialistic (not a religious) reporting bias.

I don't mind reading alternative opinions about NDE. Nobody knows for sure what they mean. But I do mind people who approach this complex phenomenon with bigotry. It is easy to use fictional characters as a bully pulpit to attack real people.

"Passage" provides neither a fair discussion of NDE nor a good entertainment. There are simply not enough subplots for a 790 page book. The book is packed with uninteresting detail about a puzzle whose solution most readers will find unsatisfying and prosaic. Willis could have told the whole story in 300 pages. Unfortunately, in mad modern times, nobody can be too pretentious.

The book doesn't even look like vintage Connie Willis. There is not much of her humanism. Her marvelous sense of humor is gone. She writes with a "killer instinct" that seems strange to her nature. Her style reminds me of a radical debunker with a personal agenda.

In case "Passage" was your first Connie Willis book, I strongly encourage you to give her a second change. Willis is a brilliant writer. All her books are excellent read. I specially recommend "To Say Nothing of the Dog".

The one book about NDE that I would recommend is "The Near-Death Experience - A Reader" by Lee Bailey & Jenny Yates. This book has 24 articles. It integrates different opinions from doctors, psychologists and people who have had NDE. All major authors participate in this anthology, including skeptics like Susan Blackmore.

Rating:
Summary: Passage by Connie Willis
Review: Very good book although I was kind of disappointed with the ending. Was expecting Joanna to have dreamed it all and she really wasnt passed on. Bummer. But over all very good book and very addicting to read. Enjoy

Rating:
Summary: Long, Boring and Strongly Biased
Review: It is hard to believe this book was written by the author of "To Say Nothing of the Dog", which is my all-time favorite time travel story.

"Passage" is about Near-Death Experience, a very interesting theme. Unfortunately, Ms. Willis treats it with such a strong bias that it comes close to bigotry. She writes as a radical debunker who has an agenda of her own.

Ms. Willis strongly believes that whoever sees a religious connotation in a NDE is either a fool or a fanatic. She also implies that the authors of bestselling book about NDE lack any integrity. When they interview people who have had NDE, they lead them into believing in afterlife.

I don't mind reading alternative opinions about the meaning of NDE. Nobody knows what happens after physical death. But I mind people who approach this controversy with bigotry. I also don't think that a work of fiction is the right instrument for such a discussion.

In short, "Passage" provides neither a fair discussion of NDE nor a good entertainment. The book is very long and excruciating boring.

Rating:
Summary: I got it already
Review: Ordinarily I like Connie Willis very much. I would have loved this book at half the length, but at over 700 pages I have to say at least half is wasted. The idea is, as always, clever and well executed, but I got it at about half way through and although there is an interesting twist to the sub-plot, it does not justify the length. I won't give away the punchline, but it is hardly worth the time. At the end (finally!) I was left feeling cheated. In the words of the old Peggy Lee song, "is that all there is?"

Rating:
Summary: not her best
Review: Passage is not as gripping as e.g. the Doomsday Book or To say nothing about the Dog. The story just isn't interesting enough for a 780 pages book. When did writing a mean and lean book become a crime?.