Passage

Rating:
Summary: Slow paced thriller just about delivers.
Review: Near-death experiences (NDEs) are undeniably a fascinating subject, which Willis explores in a competent, if rather long-winded manner. The plot unfolds in often painstaking detail, carried forward by protracted and repetitive conversations between the main characters. Perhaps it was Willis' intention that the reader experience a sense of deja vu? I don't know, but I certainly got the impression of reading the same thing every 30 pages or so. Certainly the main protagonists' ongoing vexation with the huge labyrinthine hospital and their elaborate efforts to avoid the dreaded Mr Mandrake (whose spiritual bent incurs the wrath of the scientific researchers) are oft repeated motifs.

There are certainly a few clever twists and turns together with one major shock along the way, but I found it hard to engage with any of Willis' characters or to suspend my disbelief at some of the stilted and downright unconvincing dialogue (would a doctor rushing to an emergency really be told it's bad luck to walk under a ladder!!??) . With the exception of Ed (who, for UK readers, embellishes his tales from the war rather like Uncle Albert in "Only Fools and Horses") and courageous, indefatigable Kit, none of the characters are that likable, the irritatingly saintly Vielle and the geekish Richard being particularly annoying. I also found the way that Maisie's mother is sneered at for her desperate positive thinking to be rather unfair.

Nitpicking aside though, I'm glad I stayed the course and, ultimately I feel that Passage is a worthwhile effort that just about delivers the goods. The somewhat enigmatic ending, however, may leave some readers dissatisfied.


Rating:
Summary: Slow starting and overlong, but in the end moving
Review: Passage is Connie Willis' new novel, and it's fairly clear from the subject matter that it's an entry in her more serious mode. It concerns Near Death Experiences (NDE's), and the attempts of a couple of researchers to explain them as the reaction of the brain and body to the physical conditions of dying -- with a glimmer of hope that such understanding might even lead to a means of bringing more people back from the brink of death. As such, the book deals with several people on the verge of dying -- including some who have, as it were, been there and back.

The main character is Joanna Lander, a psychologist investigating NDE's at a Denver hospital. She is called whenever a patient "codes" -- suffers heart failure, and if the patient is revived, she interviews him or her about her experience. Her cross to bear is a rival researcher, Maurice Mandrake, who has written a best-selling book asserting that NDE's involve a specific set of images including angels, messages from others who have died, etc., as well as asserting that they are essentially spiritual in nature. Willis spends many pages in something like her madcap comedy mode, detailing Joanna's attempts to find shortcuts threw the maze that is the hospital, both in order to avoid Mandrake and to reach coded patients faster than he can.

Then a new researcher, Dr. Richard Wright, enters the picture. He has a plan to simulate NDE's by introducing the same chemicals researchers have detected in the brains of dying patients into healthy patients. Mandrake, of course, thinks this folly, as it implies that NDE's are physical and not spiritual in nature. But Joanna, after some hesitation, agrees to help Richard. However, they run into problems recruiting appropriate subjects and finally, Joanna (rather unprofessionally, I thought) decides to become a subject herself.

This is about when the book, which begins very slowly, almost tediously, becomes interesting. Joanna's simulated NDE seems very real, and soon she realizes that what she experiences while she is "under" is a very real-seeming version of the Titanic, just as it is sinking. It's peppered with details which are apparently historically correct, but also with curious variances that come from Joanna's own life. So she keeps going under, while trying to track down Titanic-related details, and trying to correlate the imagery of other NDE's with Titanic imagery. Then events take a wrenching turn, and the novel moves to its extended close, which mixes tragic events with some hopeful and optimistic discoveries.

I had some problems with this book. As I suggested earlier, it starts slowly, and it's too long. Willis' trademark habit of making some set of frustrating everyday-life details a recurring motif or running joke (in this case, the difficulty of navigating the hospital corridors, plus the never-open cafeteria) is over-extended here -- it becomes annoying. She doesn't quite manage to make Richard seem real, though the other characters are well-done. Some of the plot devices are implausible -- for example, would experienced researchers really believe that a man claiming to be 65 in the year 2000 was a crewman on the Yorktown at the Battle of Midway? And the big revelation Joanna finds, which drives the action of the final third of the novel, really doesn't seem that spectacular -- more just common sense. Indeed, the book really is only barely SF -- which isn't a complaint, just an observation.

On the other hand, after the slow start, the story becomes quite involving, and if I felt just a bit manipulated by some of the plot turns, I was still genuinely moved, and shocked at the right time, excited at other times, in tears by the end. The passel of characters surrounding Joanna are engaging people, and we feel for them and root for them. If the book turns on a scientific discovery which seems kind of minor, or at least obvious, that still leaves our concern for the characters to interest us. At any rate, while this isn't a perfect performance, nor is it Willis' best work, it's a worthwhile and moving novel.

Rating:
Summary: A Near-Death Experience for the reader...
Review: What kind of book do you get when you combine a talented, multi-Hugo/Nebula-award-winning author like Connie Willis; the shadowy, supernatural world of Near-Death Experiences (NDEs); a race against time; and one of the world's greatest disasters?

Hold on, we'll get to the answer later....

In Willis's "Passage," NDE researcher Dr. Joanna Lander is asked to join Dr. Richard Wright's research project into the nature of NDEs. Wright has found a way to recreate NDEs via a designer chemical and is now looking to explore whether they have a purpose beyond that of ushering the dying into the afterlife. Dr. Lander's best friend in the ER, Vielle, also wants to see the young Joanna pair up with the hunky new doc on the block and soon Dr. Lander is helping Wright extract critical medical and psychological info from a less-than-ideal set of volunteers. Obstructing all the work is Maurice Mandrake, a bestselling author (and quack), who has made a small fortune selling his books to the gullible. Mandrake does not wish to see Lander and Wright come up with any results that would render his obsession with hokey New Age images of angels and "life flashing before one's eyes" less profitable.

But with the financing review for the project hurtling toward them, and the sudden withdrawal of some of the progressively fearful test subjects, Lander and Wright make a fateful decision: the best chronicler of the events would be someone well-versed in the science of NDEs. Lander assents, only to find herself caught in the horror of one of the most famous disasters of all time. Each further test reveals more of the greater picture, until Lander is driven nearly mad by what she finds out about The Other Side.

Sounds like a winner, right? Unfortunately, the answer to the opening question is, "A book with a great premise, but which is ultimately sunk by tedium, repetition, a flat ending, stereotypical characterizations, and a criminal lack of editing."

Seriously, someone should find Willis's editor and charge them with second degree murder--of a novel. The first two-thirds of the book is an ad nauseum repetition of events:
1. Dr. Lander gets info on a patient's NDE and puzzles over the meaning, while Dr. Wright drops names of brain chemicals.
2. Lander hangs out and watches a movie with buddy Vielle.
3. Lander pops in to check on a comatose patient.
4. Lander tries to convince Vielle to quit working in the ER.
5. Lander talks to a precocious (and oh-so-irritating) little girl with heart trouble.
6. Lander tries to avoid meeting undesirable people in the hallway or answering her page/phone.
7. One character or another yammers forever about something inconsequential.
8. Lander undergoes her own chemically-induced NDE and freaks out.
9. Repeat for several hundred pages.
Most novels in recent years are too long by twenty percent. This one pushes forty. I cannot tell you how much of a slog it is just to get to the interesting part of the book. Sad to say, even the interesting parts are disappointing. A major twist occurs in the last third, but at this point most people have lost the will to live and had an NDE of their own.

And this is a great loss, frankly, since Willis has some good ideas here. But the glacial pace at which events occur and plot points transpire could only be rescued by a triumphant ending, which this book completely lacks. The final key to NDEs is so underwhelming, and the fate of Joanna so frayed, that many readers will feel robbed for having pushed past the first hundred pages. Life is too short to read bad books and "Passage" has to rank right up there with some of the most draining books ever committed to print.

This is my first experience with Willis and I was disappointed by the shoddiness of this work, particularly in light of the number of awards she's won. Her reputation alone warrants an extra star here, but it's generous. Truth is, "Passage" is just barely passable.