Passage

Rating:
Summary: Good, but not her best
Review: At 700+ pages, with lengthy descriptions of travels through a labrynth of a hospital and exactly how many phone messages the main character has to fast-forward through, Passage is a bit on the indulgent side, suggesting that Connie Willis has used the screwball comedy of "Bellwether" and "At the Rialto" once too often. However, she makes up for it with an intriguing plot, and a daring that sets her apart from most science fiction (well, make that fiction, period) writing these days, It's not up to "The Doomsday Book" (my vote for her personal best), but it is a smart, entertaining diversion.

Rating:
Summary: Is this why she wins all these awards?
Review: Well. It kept me reading, but I can't say it's because I enjoyed the book. The characters were all either unsympathetic or unbelievable (this from an alleged master of characterization?), while the symbolism alternated between being heavy-handed and meaningless (and sometimes managed to be both.) I kept going because a) a lot of people had encountered a "problem" near the end, and I wanted to see what made them put it down, and b) I wanted to see how she would resolve the central metaphysical problem. With respect to "a)", what gave them pause I found a relief; as for "b)", well, chances were it was going to be a bit of a letdown, and it was, but I can't really fault her for that.

Oh, and it was too darn long.

In the end, my reaction has to be "Meh." I'd reccomend reading Jamil Nasir's _Distance Haze_ -- I think he handled a similar concept much better. And the best part is he did it in around half the length.

Rating:
Summary: It's not you, it's me...
Review: ... but I have to ask what in God's name Connie Willis was thinking when she wrote a 798-page book which THE ONION summed up in one headline ("Titanic Hits World's Largest Metaphor") - ?

Years ago I read Willis' "Schwarzschild Radius" and I still think it's one of the most impressive scifi short stories ever...If I understand PASSAGE...there are no "shockers," as others have mentioned, to be found. There's a puzzle whose solution, while interesting and likely true, is notably not astounding enough to justify 798 pages, and WAY too much of everything else.

The book is also an unsuccessful mix of literary tactics: the endless repetition of mundane events and details -- Style the First -- the none-too-subtle implication of the central notion that each generation's response to death finds its own focus -- Style the Second -- and the surreal nature of the open-ended and open-to-interpretation finale (I can't in good conscience call it a climax) which is radically different from anything leading up to it -- Style the Third.

Scifi readers not only quickly learn the shorthand of the genre, no matter how disguised or blended with others a particular work might be, but particularly enjoy figuring out the world of any story as it goes along -- extrapolating from context is one of the central joys of the scifi experience...PASSAGE hits us over the head repeatedly with the very heavy-handedness of its methods -- could that be the obligatory Orpheus reference over there? -- and you find yourself quickly skimming pages to get to the end and find out what the point is.

Read "Schwarzschild Radius" to see how effective Connie Willis can be, and if you want to read PASSAGE, do it on a cruise...

Rating:
Summary: Affecting , smart and very readable
Review: I was not a big fan of _Doomsday Book_, but liked enough of it to want to revisit Willis as a writer. I'm glad that I did. I found _Passage_ to be one of the smartest new science fiction/fantasy books that I've read in a while. I found the characters plausible and likeable. I was moved by the plot and the emotion woven around the plot. Where most fantasy novels would have filler, Willis densely fills the books with facts and details which are all relevant and build a complicated idea into a read that manages to be satisfying on more than one level.

Joanna Lander is studying near-death experiences, but is determined to do it from a scientific rather than spiritual perspective. When she meets up with another researcher who has similar goals, they discover more than they could have imagined about what happens to the dying brain.

Rating:
Summary: Vaguely Dissatisfied
Review: I had been looking forward to a new Connie Willis novel, so I wanted to like this book. Yet I couldn't help but feel vaguely dissatisfied throughout. The characters weren't very deep. While the idea was interesting, the plot felt a little too contrived and a lot too repetitive. The idea of puzzling through it all seemed appealing at first, but eventually I wanted to just shout at the book, don't you remember what she said way back on page 300-whatever? We did this already!

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating topic, so-so novel
Review: Connie Willis is an imaginative and cogent thinker who, in terms of the themes she explores in her novels, stands head and shoulders above most other writers in the pulp-dominated world of science fiction. The problem, however, is that her inspiration is undermined by literary skills that are average at best. In *Passage*, she takes on the fascinating topic of near death experiences and presents some creative insights and hypotheses. With the exception of a few widely spaced exhilarating sections, however, her writing is disappointingly pedestrian; the result is a novel that seems bloated and frequently dull.

Willis' principal characters function adequately to convey her story and message, but they are of the cardboard cutout variety. With the exception of the precocious, disaster-obsessed young heart patient, Maisie, it's difficult to care about any of them.

But what's worse is the lackluster nature of her prose. Some writers can carry along even a weak story line simply through an ability to conjure images, capture characters' internal ruminations, and string together words and phrases that transport the reader into a different world. Willis is not one of these writers.

What renders this lack of literary sparkle worse is that the book is far longer than it should have been. Readers are forced to slog through six hundred pages of a saga that could more effectively have been communicated in three or four hundred. Time and again, Willis tantalizes the reader with some bit of information or "secret" that we KNOW will eventually be revealed, but then she forces us to wade through page after page of laborious conversation and painfully detailed descriptions of character movements before she finally gets to the point we know full well is coming.

The book suffers further from overused cutesy "running jokes" that soon become irritating, including "you can't get there from here" hospital architecture, the volunteer who is always too busy to participate in the study, the cafeteria that is never open, the man-chasing airhead nurse, and on and on.

In her analysis of the NDE phenomenon, Willis demonstrates an admirable determination to stand up for science and against wooly-headed mysticism. However, in presenting her own position, she ultimately comes across just as intolerant and dogmatic as the charlatans she opposes. She uses her manuscript too freely as a bully pulpit to ridicule people who would disagree with her own scientific explanation for NDE's.

Her conclusions about the actual nature of NDE's seem breathtaking and yes, plausible. However, Willis would do well to temper the zeal with which she promulgates her view that near death experiences can (will?) be explained on the basis of their evolutionary function. If one's premise is that biological/mental phenomena exist because they *must* have proven to have evolutionary value to the species, then it all too easily becomes a kind of parlor game to invent scenarios that support this notion. From there it's all too easy to become attached to these speculative explanations as "true."

Not so fast, however. Some sophisticated contemporary Darwinian thinkers such as Stephen Jay Gould argue persuasively that not all biological phenomena have evolved or persisted because they have survival value. Sometimes, strange traits simply tag along as part of a broader evolutionary package for reasons that are exceedingly complex. I don't begrudge Willis a good story line, but I would have preferred that she exhibit at least a slightly more agnostic attitude toward NDE's than she reveals in *Passage*. The truth is that near death experiences remain mysterious, and Willis' interesting hypotheses notwithstanding, we may never really know why they occur.

Rating:
Summary: A good read...though not my favorite Willis book.
Review: Connie Willis is one of the most amazing writers of contemporary sci-fi/fantasy, and Passage was wonderful: haunting, full of characters you can't help but love, full of mystery. Only Willis can pull off the stunning plot twist that happens halfway through the novel (read it to find out what I'm talking about) and the ending that stays with you long after you close the book. And only Willis can write a novel about near-death experiences that doesn't pretend to know all the answers, yet leaves you feeling you know more than you ever needed to. My only complaint is that it seemed to drag on in spots. For instance: the constant, drawn-out descriptions of negotiating the labyrinthine corridors of the hospital-under-construction. This is a great novel, however, but I would highly recommend Willis's Doomsday Book or To Say Nothing of the Dog before I would recommendd Passage.

Rating:
Summary: Almost but not Quite...
Review: ...believeable and not paced to avoid boredom. I really, really enjoy Connie's books and have bought and read all of them to date, but this one completely missed the mark for me. Yes, good starting premise. Okay, the characters are sharply and deeply drawn. But I felt the book could have been half the length and still accomplished as much: too much distracting avoidance by the protagonist of one or two jerk characters in many scenes drove me crazy and the characters do things that just don't make sense. And lastly, the ending did not at all work, I found it a total letdown on a literary level and also emotionally. I loved Doomsday and her more "scifi" books with time travel, I was enraptured by ..Christmas Stories but I just can't recommend Passage like her others.

Rating:
Summary: Twists and turns are gripping
Review: I tremendously enjoyed this medical-mystery-science-fiction-romantic-thriller (I'm afraid that is the best it can be catagorized!) The fascinating plot involves researchers looking for a way to understand and possibly conquer near-death experiences. As a physician, I can say her medical explanations are right on target, and the way she combines the reality with her own story is perfect.

At the beginnning of each of the many chapters, she quotes the last words of various famous figures, which are compelling in themselves.

I loved the way the plot twisted and turned. Every time I was sure I knew where the book was going, Connie Willis changed directions.

The complaints I see in the reviews and others are unjustified, because I think the "bogged down" feeling that some of the characters experience in the referenced passages is intentional. In addition, every single one of the characters (even the annoying ones!) make an important contribution to the book's theme. The well-thought out manner in which Ms. Willis intertwines all of these situations and characters enriches the reading experience.

I read this book in two nights (almost 600 pages!) After thinking about it for several days I had to read it again, and was delighted to find even more meaning in the book. I am a voracious reader, and it has been a very long time since a novel affected me as much as this book.

Rating:
Summary: A must read book.
Review: As a fan of Connie Willis, I expect great things from her. With this book she has exceeded my expectations. The characters are well developed, and very lovable. The plot is well defined, and the setting is believable. Ms. Willis weaves information about various historical disasters and famous last words throughout the book which just adds to the story. You will fall in love with Maisie, a little girl with heart problems, Kit, the niece of an alzheimers patient, and of course Joanna and Richard, the researchers who are trying to discover what happens when people have near death experiences. I highly recommend this book, I read it in two days (It would have been one if I hadn't had to go to sleep!) and had a hard time putting it down. I even cooked dinner with it open in front of me. Connie Willis is a master storyteller, and I look forward to her next book!