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Passage
A tunnel, a light, a door. And beyond it ... the unimaginable.
Dr. Joanna Lander is a psychologist specializing in near-death experiences. She is about to get help from a new doctor with the power to give her the chance to get as close to death as anyone can.
A brilliant young neurologist, Dr. Richard Wright, has come up with a way to manufacture the near-death experience using a psychoactive drug. Joanna’s first NDE is as fascinating as she imagined � so astounding that she knows she must go back, if only to find out why that place is so hauntingly familiar.
But each time Joanna goes under, her sense of dread begins to grow, because part of her already knows why the experience is so familiar, and why she has every reason to be afraid.
Yet just when Joanna thinks she understands, she’s in for the biggest surprise of all � a shattering scenario that will keep you feverishly reading until the final climactic page.
Dr. Joanna Lander is a psychologist specializing in near-death experiences. She is about to get help from a new doctor with the power to give her the chance to get as close to death as anyone can.
A brilliant young neurologist, Dr. Richard Wright, has come up with a way to manufacture the near-death experience using a psychoactive drug. Joanna’s first NDE is as fascinating as she imagined � so astounding that she knows she must go back, if only to find out why that place is so hauntingly familiar.
But each time Joanna goes under, her sense of dread begins to grow, because part of her already knows why the experience is so familiar, and why she has every reason to be afraid.
Yet just when Joanna thinks she understands, she’s in for the biggest surprise of all � a shattering scenario that will keep you feverishly reading until the final climactic page.
780 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published May 1, 2001
275 people are currently reading
6,334 people want to read
About the author
Connie Willis
257books4,553followersConstance Elaine Trimmer Willis is an American science fiction writer. She is one of the most honored science fiction writers of the 1980s and 1990s.
She has won, among other awards, ten Hugo Awards and six Nebula Awards. Willis most recently won a Hugo Award for All Seated on the Ground (August 2008). She was the 2011 recipient of the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA).
She lives in Greeley, Colorado with her husband Courtney Willis, a professor of physics at the University of Northern Colorado. She also has one daughter, Cordelia.
Willis is known for her accessible prose and likable characters. She has written several pieces involving time travel by history students and faculty of the future University of Oxford. These pieces include her Hugo Award-winning novels Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog and the short story "Fire Watch," found in the short story collection of the same name.
Willis tends to the comedy of manners style of writing. Her protagonists are typically beset by single-minded people pursuing illogical agendas, such as attempting to organize a bell-ringing session in the middle of a deadly epidemic (Doomsday Book), or frustrating efforts to analyze near-death experiences by putting words in the mouths of interviewees (Passage).
She has won, among other awards, ten Hugo Awards and six Nebula Awards. Willis most recently won a Hugo Award for All Seated on the Ground (August 2008). She was the 2011 recipient of the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA).
She lives in Greeley, Colorado with her husband Courtney Willis, a professor of physics at the University of Northern Colorado. She also has one daughter, Cordelia.
Willis is known for her accessible prose and likable characters. She has written several pieces involving time travel by history students and faculty of the future University of Oxford. These pieces include her Hugo Award-winning novels Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog and the short story "Fire Watch," found in the short story collection of the same name.
Willis tends to the comedy of manners style of writing. Her protagonists are typically beset by single-minded people pursuing illogical agendas, such as attempting to organize a bell-ringing session in the middle of a deadly epidemic (Doomsday Book), or frustrating efforts to analyze near-death experiences by putting words in the mouths of interviewees (Passage).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,051 reviews
July 6, 2012
This book is kind of a beautiful mess. I can think of few other authors with the equal ability to drive me absolutely insane and keep me reading, usually with a lump in my throat. This is my third Connie Willis novel. is one of my favorite books of all time, a comedic farce wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a sci-fi novel. It is probably too long and a lot of the plot relies on misunderstandings, miscommunication, missed connections and narrative dead ends. is... not one of my favorite books of all time, a tragedy wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a sci-fi novel and haphazardly glued to a comedic farce-turned-maudlin. It is definitely too long.
Passage. Passage is a... something. It has elements of comedy, but it isn't nearly as humorous as To Say Nothing of the Dog. It is certainly tragic, but hardly the bleak death march of Doomsday Book. It is arguably sci-fi, but we're dealing with a fairly plausible (on its own terms, at least) medical exploration rather than, you know, time travel. It is also definitely too long.
But damn, all those pages pack a punch. Not that there couldn't be about a third fewer of them.
You know this if you have read Connie Willis before, but she has an... unusual way of telling stories. Basically, she plops us right into her characters brains, and give us access to their every thought. Then she gives them a mystery to solve. Instead of watching someone gather clues and track down a solution, we get to hear them endlessly natter on about what the solution might be, but no, it probably isn't, but maybe if oh, but no. Sometimes, the character will search for hundreds of pages for a particular piece of evidence, thinking it might hold the solution to the whole shebang. But it doesn't. And almost always, that part could just be clipped right out, still leaving you with an entirely respectable 500-page novel. Other times, the character is on the right track, if she could just manage to call a key person and not get a busy signal, answering machine, or unhelpful secretary.
This undeniably irritating "style" worked for me in TSNotD and irked me to no end in Doomsday Book (which definitely mashed the "phones are wacky and unpredictable!" button into oblivion). In Passage, it... still kind of bugged me, but when you are unraveling the biggest mystery of all, I guess you are going to have to expect some wheel-spinning. Though it probably didn't need to be in the form of endless descriptions of the maze-like interior of a hospital constantly under construction, or the repeated ramblings of a WWII veteran, or people constantly complaining about a cafeteria that is never open. I mean, it's all lightly amusing, and filled with colorful supporting players, but good grief. Is there an editor in the house?
But as I said, some of that is to be expected (and at least some of it turns out to be thematically relevant). Because the mystery Connie Willis is taking on here is death. Technically, near-death experiences -- what they are, what they mean. But really, it's death. The big question that no one will ever answer. Willis certainly doesn't, not even in nearly 800 pages, but she gets so, so close to figuring out what death feels like, or what we imagine it will feel like, or want to hope for. Both for the dying and those who must go on living afterward. Somehow, she accomplishes this while offering several Wikipedia pages worth of detail on brain chemistry, famous last words, and the sinking of the Titanic.
The Titanic. There's a subject that probably doesn't need another book, and yet it's still a fascinating, harrowing tragedy, meaningful in its meaninglessness, and the perfect centerpiece for a book about the struggle with mortality (no, I'm not going to explain how it fits into the plot). "The perfect metaphor, looming up suddenly out of nowhere in the middle of your maiden voyage, unseen until it is nearly upon you, unavoidable even when you try to swerve, unexpected even though there have been warnings all along." As it is with icebergs, so too is it with car crashes and murders and heart attacks and cancer: if only things had happened a little differently, disaster may have been averted. But only for a little while. Every ship eventually sinks.
But hopefully not today.
Passage. Passage is a... something. It has elements of comedy, but it isn't nearly as humorous as To Say Nothing of the Dog. It is certainly tragic, but hardly the bleak death march of Doomsday Book. It is arguably sci-fi, but we're dealing with a fairly plausible (on its own terms, at least) medical exploration rather than, you know, time travel. It is also definitely too long.
But damn, all those pages pack a punch. Not that there couldn't be about a third fewer of them.
You know this if you have read Connie Willis before, but she has an... unusual way of telling stories. Basically, she plops us right into her characters brains, and give us access to their every thought. Then she gives them a mystery to solve. Instead of watching someone gather clues and track down a solution, we get to hear them endlessly natter on about what the solution might be, but no, it probably isn't, but maybe if oh, but no. Sometimes, the character will search for hundreds of pages for a particular piece of evidence, thinking it might hold the solution to the whole shebang. But it doesn't. And almost always, that part could just be clipped right out, still leaving you with an entirely respectable 500-page novel. Other times, the character is on the right track, if she could just manage to call a key person and not get a busy signal, answering machine, or unhelpful secretary.
This undeniably irritating "style" worked for me in TSNotD and irked me to no end in Doomsday Book (which definitely mashed the "phones are wacky and unpredictable!" button into oblivion). In Passage, it... still kind of bugged me, but when you are unraveling the biggest mystery of all, I guess you are going to have to expect some wheel-spinning. Though it probably didn't need to be in the form of endless descriptions of the maze-like interior of a hospital constantly under construction, or the repeated ramblings of a WWII veteran, or people constantly complaining about a cafeteria that is never open. I mean, it's all lightly amusing, and filled with colorful supporting players, but good grief. Is there an editor in the house?
But as I said, some of that is to be expected (and at least some of it turns out to be thematically relevant). Because the mystery Connie Willis is taking on here is death. Technically, near-death experiences -- what they are, what they mean. But really, it's death. The big question that no one will ever answer. Willis certainly doesn't, not even in nearly 800 pages, but she gets so, so close to figuring out what death feels like, or what we imagine it will feel like, or want to hope for. Both for the dying and those who must go on living afterward. Somehow, she accomplishes this while offering several Wikipedia pages worth of detail on brain chemistry, famous last words, and the sinking of the Titanic.
The Titanic. There's a subject that probably doesn't need another book, and yet it's still a fascinating, harrowing tragedy, meaningful in its meaninglessness, and the perfect centerpiece for a book about the struggle with mortality (no, I'm not going to explain how it fits into the plot). "The perfect metaphor, looming up suddenly out of nowhere in the middle of your maiden voyage, unseen until it is nearly upon you, unavoidable even when you try to swerve, unexpected even though there have been warnings all along." As it is with icebergs, so too is it with car crashes and murders and heart attacks and cancer: if only things had happened a little differently, disaster may have been averted. But only for a little while. Every ship eventually sinks.
But hopefully not today.
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April 18, 2023
Passage by Connie Willis - 600-page SF novel taking place some years hence in and around Mercy General Hospital in Denver, Colorado and featuring a pair of pronounced SF elements: 1) there's another new hard drug on the street that makes users crazy and violent, and 2) there's also a new medical procedure that uses specific chemicals to simulate an NDE (Near Death Experience). It's this second SF element at the heart of Ms. Willis' gripping novel.
Passage is a doorstop (the audio book is nearly 30 hours long) but what will keep a reader turning those pages is not only the discoveries revolving around the NDEs but also our coming to care about more than a dozen men and women in the unfolding drama. Herein lies Ms. Willis' magic: as we're reading her novel, we feel as if we're living through the joys, sorrow and challenges of her characters. Remarkable literary accomplishment.
What is a Near Death Experience? Two critical question the folks at Mercy General pose: what causes such an experience and what does it mean? At one end of the spectrum we have Maurice Mandrake, author of the bestseller, The Light at the End of the Tunnel, claiming the NDE proves there is a heaven complete with glowing angels and one's loved ones waiting for us at the pearly gates. At the other end of the spectrum Dr. Richard Wright sets out to prove an NDE results from overstimulation within particular areas of the brain.
Stated simply, Dr. Mandrake claims the NDE is an entirely spiritual experience whereas Dr. Wright looks to neuroscience to explain the phenomenon. Between these two poles we have our main character, Dr. Joanna Lander, a young, attractive, exceedingly bright cognitive psychologist. Dr. Lander knows, via her many interviews with individuals having NDEs, that the world they experienced during a Near Death Experience was real, every bit as real as their everyday waking lives. And when she eventually undergoes the procedure to simulate her own NDE, her findings are confirmed firsthand.
If what I've written above sounds intriguing, I urge you to pick up a copy of Passage (or listen to the audio book). I can assure you that you will not be disappointed. Many readers will also enjoy the references to the disaster of the Titanic (both the actual sinking in 1911 and the 1997 blockbuster film starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio). But enough with specifics.
Shifting to the philosophic, it's worth noting all references in the novel to the spiritual side of the Near Death Experience are made within a Christian framework. The author's approach is curious considering a number of other traditions place great emphasis on alternate states of consciousness. Brief comments on several -
Shamanic Journeying - For many indigenous peoples and tribal cultures, from Siberia to the Amazon rainforest, from the North American plains to the jungles of Africa, hallucinatory drugs and/or drumming are frequently used to transport the tribe's shaman to the Lower World or the Higher World. The passage is facilitated by what anthropologist Michael Harner terms the Shamanic State of Consciousness. For anyone interested, I'd recommend Michael Harner's The Way of the Shaman.
Yoga Nidra - One of the yogic techniques to simulate death within the yoga tradition is Yoga Nidra, that is, the ability to maintain conscious awareness in dreamless deep sleep. Yoga Nidra is an advanced practice since, unlike our waking state or our dreaming, there are no forms; rather, there is no sense of individual self - all that exists is an unbounded ocean of blissful consciousness.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Bardo Thodol) is perhaps the most well-known text on the passage from life to death. Much detail is provided on all the stages one will experience in the dying process. The book I'd recommend: Preparing to Die - Practical Advice and Spiritual Wisdom from the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition by Andrew Holecek.
Lucid Dreaming - One of the leading teachers of lucid dreaming in the West is Stephen LaBerge. Scores of Westerners have learned how to become lucid while dreaming following the advice given in his book Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming. While reading Connie Willis' novel, I couldn't help thinking of how a background in lucid dreaming might have had an impact on her character's Near Death Experiences.
I cite the above in the spirit of sharing an entire spectrum and range of backgrounds we can bring to reading Passage. Connie Willis has written a terrific novel. A work not to be missed.
American author Connie Willis
February 3, 2008
This book, about half-way through, does something one may not do half-way through a novel, and then continues, unabashed. I adore it.
February 6, 2024
2024 : YEAR OF DNFS
I’m determined to actually read the books that have been squatting on my shelves for YEARS, and because of some Poor Life Choices� I suspect some of them are gonna be dnfed with extreme prejudice. First victim : Connie Willis, an sf author who wrote two of my favourite sf short stories, “Fire Watch� and “All my Darling Daughters�.
INFODUMPS
Science fiction is notorious for infodumping and Connie is very bad at this from the get go :
”Are you familiar with the new RIPT scan?�
Joanna shook her head. “Is it similar to a PET scan?�
He nodded. “They both measure your brain activity, but the RIPT scan is exponentially faster and more detailed. Plus, it uses chemical tracers, not radioactive ones, so the number of scans per subject doesn’t have to be limited. It simultaneously photographs the electrochemical activity in different subsections of the brain for a 3-D picture of neural activity in the working grain. Or the dying brain.�
There is even a little kid who does infodumping :
”Look,� Maisie said. “This is the Great Molasses Flood. It happened in 1919.� She pointed to a grainy black and white photo of what looked like an oil slick. “These huge tanks broke and all the molasses poured out and drowned everybody. Twenty-one people…�
LANGUAGE WAY TOO ROMCOMMY
”Can you give me the extension for CICU?� he said “I –�
“It’s 4502,� a cute blond nurse said, coming up to the nurse’s station. “Are you looking for Joanna Lander?�
“Yes,� he said gratefully. “Do you know where she is?�
“No,� she said, looking at him through her lashes. “but I know where she might me. In Pediatrics…�
“Thanks," he said, hanging up the phone. “Can you tell me how to get to Peds? I’m new here.�
“I know,� she said, smiling coyly. “You’re Dr Wright, right? I’m Tish.�
I thought I was suddenly reading
I’m determined to actually read the books that have been squatting on my shelves for YEARS, and because of some Poor Life Choices� I suspect some of them are gonna be dnfed with extreme prejudice. First victim : Connie Willis, an sf author who wrote two of my favourite sf short stories, “Fire Watch� and “All my Darling Daughters�.
INFODUMPS
Science fiction is notorious for infodumping and Connie is very bad at this from the get go :
”Are you familiar with the new RIPT scan?�
Joanna shook her head. “Is it similar to a PET scan?�
He nodded. “They both measure your brain activity, but the RIPT scan is exponentially faster and more detailed. Plus, it uses chemical tracers, not radioactive ones, so the number of scans per subject doesn’t have to be limited. It simultaneously photographs the electrochemical activity in different subsections of the brain for a 3-D picture of neural activity in the working grain. Or the dying brain.�
There is even a little kid who does infodumping :
”Look,� Maisie said. “This is the Great Molasses Flood. It happened in 1919.� She pointed to a grainy black and white photo of what looked like an oil slick. “These huge tanks broke and all the molasses poured out and drowned everybody. Twenty-one people…�
LANGUAGE WAY TOO ROMCOMMY
”Can you give me the extension for CICU?� he said “I –�
“It’s 4502,� a cute blond nurse said, coming up to the nurse’s station. “Are you looking for Joanna Lander?�
“Yes,� he said gratefully. “Do you know where she is?�
“No,� she said, looking at him through her lashes. “but I know where she might me. In Pediatrics…�
“Thanks," he said, hanging up the phone. “Can you tell me how to get to Peds? I’m new here.�
“I know,� she said, smiling coyly. “You’re Dr Wright, right? I’m Tish.�
I thought I was suddenly reading
May 21, 2020
2.5 stars. Connie Willis combines the idea research into near-death experiences (NDEs) with dreams of the Titanic disaster. A doctor develops a drug that simulates NDEs, and psychologist Joanna Lander starts repeatedly using this drug to attempt to confirm the reality of NDEs and the afterlife. Every time she takes the drug, she ends up wandering the decks of the Titanic, trying to stop the disaster. What is the meaning of this?
This book has some really intriguing ideas and an interesting twist to the ending, but man, is it ever slow and repetitive. Joanna goes into these NDEs over and over and over, each time inching closer to a resolution.
Willis does sometimes get too longwinded (*cough*) and this is the one of hers I bounced off the hardest (okay, maybe was worse). In the end it was underwhelming: too much work for too little payoff. I bought a copy of this book because I thought any novel by Connie Willis HAD to be good, but gave it away as soon as I was done with it.
This book has some really intriguing ideas and an interesting twist to the ending, but man, is it ever slow and repetitive. Joanna goes into these NDEs over and over and over, each time inching closer to a resolution.
Willis does sometimes get too longwinded (*cough*) and this is the one of hers I bounced off the hardest (okay, maybe was worse). In the end it was underwhelming: too much work for too little payoff. I bought a copy of this book because I thought any novel by Connie Willis HAD to be good, but gave it away as soon as I was done with it.
January 13, 2009
Ugh. I'm sorry, Connie, I like what I've read by you in the past, but I don't think this relationship can go any further. You have some neat ideas, and granted, was amazing, but dammitall, your writing style is just too unimodal for me. Every single one of your books seems to be filled with this frantic energy of characters rushing around in a frenetic frenzy for several hundred pages; after a while, it just gets tiring. After the three books I've finished, it's just gotten old.
I liked your exploration of near death experiences, but it easily could've been 300 pages shorter, and still just as effective.
Better luck next time, Connie, but for me, I don't think there will be a next time.
I liked your exploration of near death experiences, but it easily could've been 300 pages shorter, and still just as effective.
Better luck next time, Connie, but for me, I don't think there will be a next time.
August 21, 2014
I will repeat my original review of this book here:
I cannot, in all good conscience, recommend this novel. You will most likely wind up staying up all night to find out how it ends, and I also don't think it's healthy to hold your breath so long as I did while caught up in the final chapters.
This is a brilliant, deeply engaging, philosophical piece of neuroscience-fiction that manages to ponder the Big Questions while maintaining an easy conversational style, numerous moments of both tears and laughter, and characters you will love so much you wish they would come to life.
I cannot, in all good conscience, recommend this novel. You will most likely wind up staying up all night to find out how it ends, and I also don't think it's healthy to hold your breath so long as I did while caught up in the final chapters.
This is a brilliant, deeply engaging, philosophical piece of neuroscience-fiction that manages to ponder the Big Questions while maintaining an easy conversational style, numerous moments of both tears and laughter, and characters you will love so much you wish they would come to life.
January 29, 2009
I can’t believe I read this whole book. I swear, every time I picked it up, someone had added another 25 pages to it.
I thought about bailing at around page 100, and then again at page 200 and even at page 300! But I loved Doomsday by this same author, and couldn’t bring myself to give up on this one. It’s about near death experiences and the Titanic; how can that combination fail to be interesting?
In fact, the story was interesting, but the book was too long by about 200 pages�-mostly due to repeated (and repeated and repeated) minor plot elements that added nothing to the book. The dialogue and interactions among the main characters were absolutely awful and completely unbelievable. And most of the minor characters (the flirtatious nurse, sick kids� mom-in-denial, celebrity-psychologist) were caricatures and then some. Actually, I remember that the author used a similar style in Doomsday, with over-the-top character parodies, but somehow it was funnier in that book (maybe because they were British?).
There is some wonderful writing at the end of the book and very poignant perspectives on life and death. But slogging through 597 pages to get there was not worth it.
I thought about bailing at around page 100, and then again at page 200 and even at page 300! But I loved Doomsday by this same author, and couldn’t bring myself to give up on this one. It’s about near death experiences and the Titanic; how can that combination fail to be interesting?
In fact, the story was interesting, but the book was too long by about 200 pages�-mostly due to repeated (and repeated and repeated) minor plot elements that added nothing to the book. The dialogue and interactions among the main characters were absolutely awful and completely unbelievable. And most of the minor characters (the flirtatious nurse, sick kids� mom-in-denial, celebrity-psychologist) were caricatures and then some. Actually, I remember that the author used a similar style in Doomsday, with over-the-top character parodies, but somehow it was funnier in that book (maybe because they were British?).
There is some wonderful writing at the end of the book and very poignant perspectives on life and death. But slogging through 597 pages to get there was not worth it.
March 27, 2008
The premise of this book is interesting. Dr. Joanna Lander, a psychologist, specializes in studying near-death experiences. She teams up with a neurologist, Dr. Richard Wright (which was really distracting for me because I kept thinking of the mid-20th century African American author--this character is nothing like that Richard Wright) who has developed a way to manufacture near-death experiences (NDEs) using drugs. When their volunteer test subjects all disappear for various reasons, Joanna decides to experience an NDE herself to keep the project going.
This is where the story gets interesting, and the fact that this doesn't get started until chapter 15 (of 60 chapters), nearly 200 pages into the novel reveals one of the novel's chief flaws. The novel is long. Too long. At 780 pages, this is one of the longest novels I've read in a long while. And while it was compelling for some reason and I really didn't want to stop reading, it was a bit repetitive at the beginning and the end. Early in the book there are myriad mentions of the labyrinthine hospital complex and the fact that the hospital cafeteria is never open. And the last third of the book is in large part watching Dr. Wright and accomplices trying desperately to figure out what Joanna was trying to tell them, trying to figure out something the audience already knows. It's a little frustrating. The novel could definitely have used some editing to make it more concise as well as more approachable. (The fact that I had the time and inclination to read the book in a day doesn't mean that the average reader will be able to have this experience with the book. If I'd had to read it in installments over a longer period of time, I suspect I would have lost interest at more than one point.)
That issue aside, however, it is a good book, although I find it hard to say why, other than that the premise really did interest me and the chapter breaks were frequent enough to keep me reading into the next chapter to find out what would happen next. It's not a book about character development, or experimental or beautiful language or structure. It's a seriously plot-driven book. It wants to be a novel of ideas as well, but it doesn't quite succeed at that. It has some interesting ideas, but the plot is ultimately more central to the experience of reading Passage than the ideas are and I left the book with little of value to contemplate, aside from some confusion about how to interpret the final chapter.
Ultimately, Joanna (and eventually Richard as well) learns the purpose of the NDE. It is not a portal to "the Other Side" where you will see your family members and angels and Jesus (or whatever deity you prefer) waiting for you. It is not, as Noyes and Linden (real-life theorists) argue, "a result of the human mind's inability to comprehend its own death" (37). Nor is it a "psychological detachment from fear," as Roth (another real-life theorist) argues. Dr. Wright argues instead in the book that "There's no evolutionary advantage to making dying easier or more pleasant" (37). What Joanna eventually discovers is that the NDE is an SOS, the brain sending out signals to the rest of the body, "a last-ditch effort by the brain to jump-start the system" (744). It's "the body's version of a crash team" (744). And the NDE takes a form that will be meaningful for the individual. Like a dream, it plays on the knowledge, experiences, and values of the person having it. For Joanna, who doesn't believe in the dead relatives and Jesus version of the afterlife, her NDE takes the form of the TItanic. It is a metaphor for the experience her body is undergoing. As it dies, the TItanic is sinking. It sends out SOS messages, it sends up flares, it tries to communicate. If the messages get through in time, there is a chance. The body may jump-start itself. Some passengers may be saved. If not, it's the end.
Willis's ideas about NDEs are interesting not because I know anything about the actual science of NDEs or because she provides a real answer to this question, but because of what they reflect about her attitude toward death and about many people's attitudes toward death. The near-death experience and the way it is interpreted (since we don't seem to have an absolute answer about this yet) says something about our beliefs about death, the afterlife, and our values.
As Joanna is dying (the third section of the book is split fairly evenly between the other characters trying to figure out her final message to them about the way the NDEs work and her own experience of death), she has time to reflect in the NDE, where time is dilated and not linked to real-time. She thinks,
"...even the last words of the dying were not messages at all, but only useless echoes of the living. Useless lies. 'I will never leave you,' they said, and then forgot everything in the dark, disintegrating water. 'We will be together again,' and that was the biggest lie of all. There were no fathers waiting on the shining shore. No prophets, no elders, no Angels of Light. No light at all. And they would never be together. She would never see them again, or be able to tell them where she had gone."
Willis, then, is presenting a vision of life and of death that is not religious or spiritual or sentimental. You live, you do the best you can, you make a difference if you can, then you die. There is no need to sugarcoat the truth and lie about what happens after death. It is terrifying; that is why so many people cannot face it and instead depend upon images of Jesus waiting to take them into his arms, why so many people see their relatives waiting for them. The terrifying thing about death, as Willis recognizes here, is the loss of identity that accompanies it. Seeing your dead relatives waiting for you, she points out (though I can't find the precise page on which she does so), is comforting because it proves that you are still you. Someone there knows who you are.
The confusing thing for me is that although Willis makes this argument very clearly, the final chapter ends the book with a sense of hope. The final chapter opens with an epigraph from C. S. Lewis (a well-known Christian writer) on resurrection: "Guesses, of course, only guesses. If they are not true, something better will be." Opening the chapter with this quote indicates that "something better will develop," that up to this point we have only been guessing. That much is true. No one really knows what happens after death. We are guessing. But whence this focus on "something better"? At this point, the Titanic (part of Joanna's NDE) has sunk. She is dead. But the Joanna within the NDE survives, clinging to a bit of wreckage and accompanied by a small girl she has named Helen and a French bulldog. As they float there, Joanna is convinced she is about to die, but then a boat appears on the horizon. Not the Carpathia. Not the Mackay-Bennett, which was the ship sent out to pick up the frozen corpses. Instead, the ship that appears is the Yorktown, a WWII ship central to another character's stories, a WWII ship that sank. Joanna attempts to make sense of this new development: "This could be some final synapse firing, some last attempt to make sense of dying and death, some final metaphor. Or something else altogether" (780). As the boat approaches, the sky turns golden as the sun rises. The sailors are coming to rescue them.
"Are you scared?" Helen asked.
[...]
"Are you?" Helen demanded.
"Yes," Joanna said. "No. Yes."
"I'm scared, too," Helen said.
Joanna put her arm around her. The sailors were shouting from the railing, waving their white hats in the air. Behind them, above the tower, the sun came out, blindingly bright, gilding the crosses and the captain.
"What if it sinks again?" Helen asked fearfully. "The Yorktown went down at MIdway."
Joanna smiled down at her, at the little bulldog, and then looked back at the Yorktown. "All ships sink sooner or later," she said, and raised her hand to wave in greeting. "But not today. Not today."
After all the emphasis Willis has placed on the loneliness and finality of death, this ray of sunshine at the end, even if only "some final synapse firing," seems misplaced. I don't know how to feel about it. Despite everything that's been said, death is okay? There is an afterlife? Or Joanna's brain is just easing the transition? Willis does not deal clearly with this hope, nor does she earn it with the rest of the novel.
Overall, despite the flaws I've pointed out, it is a good book. It's just not a great book.
This is where the story gets interesting, and the fact that this doesn't get started until chapter 15 (of 60 chapters), nearly 200 pages into the novel reveals one of the novel's chief flaws. The novel is long. Too long. At 780 pages, this is one of the longest novels I've read in a long while. And while it was compelling for some reason and I really didn't want to stop reading, it was a bit repetitive at the beginning and the end. Early in the book there are myriad mentions of the labyrinthine hospital complex and the fact that the hospital cafeteria is never open. And the last third of the book is in large part watching Dr. Wright and accomplices trying desperately to figure out what Joanna was trying to tell them, trying to figure out something the audience already knows. It's a little frustrating. The novel could definitely have used some editing to make it more concise as well as more approachable. (The fact that I had the time and inclination to read the book in a day doesn't mean that the average reader will be able to have this experience with the book. If I'd had to read it in installments over a longer period of time, I suspect I would have lost interest at more than one point.)
That issue aside, however, it is a good book, although I find it hard to say why, other than that the premise really did interest me and the chapter breaks were frequent enough to keep me reading into the next chapter to find out what would happen next. It's not a book about character development, or experimental or beautiful language or structure. It's a seriously plot-driven book. It wants to be a novel of ideas as well, but it doesn't quite succeed at that. It has some interesting ideas, but the plot is ultimately more central to the experience of reading Passage than the ideas are and I left the book with little of value to contemplate, aside from some confusion about how to interpret the final chapter.
Ultimately, Joanna (and eventually Richard as well) learns the purpose of the NDE. It is not a portal to "the Other Side" where you will see your family members and angels and Jesus (or whatever deity you prefer) waiting for you. It is not, as Noyes and Linden (real-life theorists) argue, "a result of the human mind's inability to comprehend its own death" (37). Nor is it a "psychological detachment from fear," as Roth (another real-life theorist) argues. Dr. Wright argues instead in the book that "There's no evolutionary advantage to making dying easier or more pleasant" (37). What Joanna eventually discovers is that the NDE is an SOS, the brain sending out signals to the rest of the body, "a last-ditch effort by the brain to jump-start the system" (744). It's "the body's version of a crash team" (744). And the NDE takes a form that will be meaningful for the individual. Like a dream, it plays on the knowledge, experiences, and values of the person having it. For Joanna, who doesn't believe in the dead relatives and Jesus version of the afterlife, her NDE takes the form of the TItanic. It is a metaphor for the experience her body is undergoing. As it dies, the TItanic is sinking. It sends out SOS messages, it sends up flares, it tries to communicate. If the messages get through in time, there is a chance. The body may jump-start itself. Some passengers may be saved. If not, it's the end.
Willis's ideas about NDEs are interesting not because I know anything about the actual science of NDEs or because she provides a real answer to this question, but because of what they reflect about her attitude toward death and about many people's attitudes toward death. The near-death experience and the way it is interpreted (since we don't seem to have an absolute answer about this yet) says something about our beliefs about death, the afterlife, and our values.
As Joanna is dying (the third section of the book is split fairly evenly between the other characters trying to figure out her final message to them about the way the NDEs work and her own experience of death), she has time to reflect in the NDE, where time is dilated and not linked to real-time. She thinks,
"...even the last words of the dying were not messages at all, but only useless echoes of the living. Useless lies. 'I will never leave you,' they said, and then forgot everything in the dark, disintegrating water. 'We will be together again,' and that was the biggest lie of all. There were no fathers waiting on the shining shore. No prophets, no elders, no Angels of Light. No light at all. And they would never be together. She would never see them again, or be able to tell them where she had gone."
Willis, then, is presenting a vision of life and of death that is not religious or spiritual or sentimental. You live, you do the best you can, you make a difference if you can, then you die. There is no need to sugarcoat the truth and lie about what happens after death. It is terrifying; that is why so many people cannot face it and instead depend upon images of Jesus waiting to take them into his arms, why so many people see their relatives waiting for them. The terrifying thing about death, as Willis recognizes here, is the loss of identity that accompanies it. Seeing your dead relatives waiting for you, she points out (though I can't find the precise page on which she does so), is comforting because it proves that you are still you. Someone there knows who you are.
The confusing thing for me is that although Willis makes this argument very clearly, the final chapter ends the book with a sense of hope. The final chapter opens with an epigraph from C. S. Lewis (a well-known Christian writer) on resurrection: "Guesses, of course, only guesses. If they are not true, something better will be." Opening the chapter with this quote indicates that "something better will develop," that up to this point we have only been guessing. That much is true. No one really knows what happens after death. We are guessing. But whence this focus on "something better"? At this point, the Titanic (part of Joanna's NDE) has sunk. She is dead. But the Joanna within the NDE survives, clinging to a bit of wreckage and accompanied by a small girl she has named Helen and a French bulldog. As they float there, Joanna is convinced she is about to die, but then a boat appears on the horizon. Not the Carpathia. Not the Mackay-Bennett, which was the ship sent out to pick up the frozen corpses. Instead, the ship that appears is the Yorktown, a WWII ship central to another character's stories, a WWII ship that sank. Joanna attempts to make sense of this new development: "This could be some final synapse firing, some last attempt to make sense of dying and death, some final metaphor. Or something else altogether" (780). As the boat approaches, the sky turns golden as the sun rises. The sailors are coming to rescue them.
"Are you scared?" Helen asked.
[...]
"Are you?" Helen demanded.
"Yes," Joanna said. "No. Yes."
"I'm scared, too," Helen said.
Joanna put her arm around her. The sailors were shouting from the railing, waving their white hats in the air. Behind them, above the tower, the sun came out, blindingly bright, gilding the crosses and the captain.
"What if it sinks again?" Helen asked fearfully. "The Yorktown went down at MIdway."
Joanna smiled down at her, at the little bulldog, and then looked back at the Yorktown. "All ships sink sooner or later," she said, and raised her hand to wave in greeting. "But not today. Not today."
After all the emphasis Willis has placed on the loneliness and finality of death, this ray of sunshine at the end, even if only "some final synapse firing," seems misplaced. I don't know how to feel about it. Despite everything that's been said, death is okay? There is an afterlife? Or Joanna's brain is just easing the transition? Willis does not deal clearly with this hope, nor does she earn it with the rest of the novel.
Overall, despite the flaws I've pointed out, it is a good book. It's just not a great book.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 12, 2020
I was trying to not give so many 5 star ratings this year, but after having thought a bit about „Passage� I fear I have to go for another one of the highest ratings.
The novel bears the same typical Connie Willis trademarks of characters missing one another through bad timing, trying to hide from other characters, non functioning equipment or a misleading environment (in this case it is a labyrinthian design of a hospital with corridors ever so often blocked because of repair and/or being painted). The running gag here is a cafeteria that seemingly never is open. We also have the usual bunch of crazy, slightly tropey side characters that feel like belonging into a sitcom. As always the story takes its time, the plot is slowly unfolding taking a lot of detours.
All these points I see frequently mentioned in reviews of her books as a negative, and I can see how those quirks could be offputting for some readers. For me they are what makes Connie Willis� writing special, recognizable and extremely loveable. After the first chapter I was again fully immersed in her nutcase world. The audio, which has a length of roughly 30 hours, was meant as my companion for the next week or so, but I raced through it in 3 days.
In the case of this novel the erratic flow wasn’t only a signature but an outside metaphor for the inside struggle that is at the heart of the story. Once I realised that I appreciated the typical style even more and this appreciation was what lead in the end to another 5 stars.
At the center of „Passage� are near death experiences (NDE). Psychologist Joanna Lander studies NDEs and tries to get to the how and why of it through factual approach while always finding herself a step behind her ‚colleague� Dr. Mandrake, a religious charlatan and author of best-selling After-Death-Experience books, who influences NDE patients with his leading questions and ruins their experience for Lander in the go.
Together with neurologist Richard Wright who runs a study where he is chemically evoking NDEs in a healthy subject group she hopes to get to the bottom of this phenomenon without interfering from Mandrake. Yet as more and more of the test group prove themselves unreliable for various reasons Lander decides to go under herself with a very weird result.
Willis attends to the subject with an unemotional eye. She stays off pathos or religious colouring on the one hand, but also doesn’t steer into the too dry field of mere scientific terms � even though she shows a well researched medical knowledge. The metaphysical experiences she describes feel ‚real� (as far as such a word is possible with this topic), she tries to find an answer and not to veil anything with obscure mysticism.
Not surprisingly one of the most prominent topics of her novel is the importance of being honest, even in the face of devastating truth. She condemms the notion of being lied to. This issue is masterfully brought to page with the character of nine year old Maisie suffering from cardiomyopathy and little hope of surviving. The girl is sick and tired of being lied to by adults who want her to stay positive and buries herself in the studies of human disasters like the sinking of the Titanic, the burning of the Hindenburg and others. Her obsession with those topics lets her become Joanna Lander’s secret study assistant who is the only one to tread her like an adult.
The paragraphs concerning Maisie and her view on life and the world in general are some of the very best moments in the book. Her fierceness and vulnerability are skillfully portrayed. I was rooting for her in a way that it even didn’t matter if she lived or died in the end. Every outcome would have felt right. Willis managed to overrule my everylasting fear of death with her writing and somehow let me make my peace with our mortality � not a small feat.
About two thirds into the book the author decided to go into a direction I have seldomly seen in novels (and which I can’t say much about for spoilery reasons) and which awed me even more, because it really worked.
Connie Willis is a literate, intelligent author and uses her knowledge well in her novels. So this time I learned a lot about disasters and literature and medical terms/procedures concerning cardiac arrest and how everything somehow connects to everything. But above all I learned about the importance of honesty and the healing effect of being useful.
Her holistic approach to life and death was a pleasure to behold and one more entry in my so-far-I-love-everything-she-wrote list.
The novel bears the same typical Connie Willis trademarks of characters missing one another through bad timing, trying to hide from other characters, non functioning equipment or a misleading environment (in this case it is a labyrinthian design of a hospital with corridors ever so often blocked because of repair and/or being painted). The running gag here is a cafeteria that seemingly never is open. We also have the usual bunch of crazy, slightly tropey side characters that feel like belonging into a sitcom. As always the story takes its time, the plot is slowly unfolding taking a lot of detours.
All these points I see frequently mentioned in reviews of her books as a negative, and I can see how those quirks could be offputting for some readers. For me they are what makes Connie Willis� writing special, recognizable and extremely loveable. After the first chapter I was again fully immersed in her nutcase world. The audio, which has a length of roughly 30 hours, was meant as my companion for the next week or so, but I raced through it in 3 days.
In the case of this novel the erratic flow wasn’t only a signature but an outside metaphor for the inside struggle that is at the heart of the story. Once I realised that I appreciated the typical style even more and this appreciation was what lead in the end to another 5 stars.
At the center of „Passage� are near death experiences (NDE). Psychologist Joanna Lander studies NDEs and tries to get to the how and why of it through factual approach while always finding herself a step behind her ‚colleague� Dr. Mandrake, a religious charlatan and author of best-selling After-Death-Experience books, who influences NDE patients with his leading questions and ruins their experience for Lander in the go.
Together with neurologist Richard Wright who runs a study where he is chemically evoking NDEs in a healthy subject group she hopes to get to the bottom of this phenomenon without interfering from Mandrake. Yet as more and more of the test group prove themselves unreliable for various reasons Lander decides to go under herself with a very weird result.
Willis attends to the subject with an unemotional eye. She stays off pathos or religious colouring on the one hand, but also doesn’t steer into the too dry field of mere scientific terms � even though she shows a well researched medical knowledge. The metaphysical experiences she describes feel ‚real� (as far as such a word is possible with this topic), she tries to find an answer and not to veil anything with obscure mysticism.
Not surprisingly one of the most prominent topics of her novel is the importance of being honest, even in the face of devastating truth. She condemms the notion of being lied to. This issue is masterfully brought to page with the character of nine year old Maisie suffering from cardiomyopathy and little hope of surviving. The girl is sick and tired of being lied to by adults who want her to stay positive and buries herself in the studies of human disasters like the sinking of the Titanic, the burning of the Hindenburg and others. Her obsession with those topics lets her become Joanna Lander’s secret study assistant who is the only one to tread her like an adult.
The paragraphs concerning Maisie and her view on life and the world in general are some of the very best moments in the book. Her fierceness and vulnerability are skillfully portrayed. I was rooting for her in a way that it even didn’t matter if she lived or died in the end. Every outcome would have felt right. Willis managed to overrule my everylasting fear of death with her writing and somehow let me make my peace with our mortality � not a small feat.
About two thirds into the book the author decided to go into a direction I have seldomly seen in novels (and which I can’t say much about for spoilery reasons) and which awed me even more, because it really worked.
Connie Willis is a literate, intelligent author and uses her knowledge well in her novels. So this time I learned a lot about disasters and literature and medical terms/procedures concerning cardiac arrest and how everything somehow connects to everything. But above all I learned about the importance of honesty and the healing effect of being useful.
Her holistic approach to life and death was a pleasure to behold and one more entry in my so-far-I-love-everything-she-wrote list.
May 4, 2013
Christmas 2010: I realised that I had got stuck in a rut. I was re-reading old favourites again and again, waiting for a few trusted authors to release new works. Something had to be done.
On the spur of the moment I set myself a challenge, to read every book to have won the award. That’s 35 books, 6 of which I’d previously read, leaving 29 titles by 14 authors who were new to me.
While working through this reading list I got married, went on my honeymoon, switched career and became a father. As such these stories became imprinted on my memory as the soundtrack to the happiest period in my life (so far).
The opening salvo of my Locus Quest were a bit hit and miss.
= brilliant!
= so-so
= perfect!
= ummmm�
If you’ve never read any before � probably isn’t the best place to start. And I say that as a fan.
I’ve since read and (and loved them both) but if I hadn’t been working my way through a specific reading list, I’m not sure I’d have given another chance after .
It’s not that it’s a bad book:
- The characters are likeable
- It plays on the heartstrings
- There are amusing moments
- Some interesting discussions
- Memorable use of location
- Powerful thematic resonance
- Brave plot development
So why only two stars?
I promise, I’m not naturally stingy with my stars.
I wanted to like it.
To me, those common elements of � writing style which work so effectively in her books (bureaucracy, late messages, tragic death, meandering mystery) act in those stories as a sort of grounding mechanism and counterpoint for the danger or romance of the time-travel adventure. In , the ‘adventure� is a scientific investigation into markedly morbid terrain and, in my opinion, applying the same techniques just doesn’t work.
This time around I found the bureaucracy grating, the late messages petty and the meandering mystery not particularly mysterious and mostly just frustrating.
For a sci-fi award winner, there really wasn’t much (any?) in the way of classic sci-fi elements. The ending was vague, symbolic, but ultimately unsatisfying. And for significant periods progress became a sort of grit-your-teeth and trudge.
Masie Nellis, the sick 9-yr old girl, is such a loveable and memorable character that she practically earns that second star on her own.
But I won’t read this one again. If anybody would like to see if they fare any better, let me know and (for a couple of quid donation to a good cause of your choice) this book can be yours, otherwise is looking at a one-way ticket to the local charity shop.
August 19, 2017
It would be fair, I think, to say that Connie Willis has a formula. Take a well educated 30ish year old trying to solve an unsolveable scientific mystery. While trying avoid an incredibly annoying coworker/family member/etc, they meet a similarly inclined professional of the opposite sex who they join forces with. Armed with a general disdain for the absurdities of contemporary society and a somewhat uncanny knowledge of classic literature, they spend several hundred pages trying to piece together the clues which will reveal the hidden mysteries of life. Generally this works by one of the protagonists hearing some innocuous comment from a secondary character, which makes them think of some historical event from around the turn of the 20th century, which in turn reminds of them something that a third character said a hundred pages earlier, and then ties together with something that the other protagonist was musing over, possibly by way of a Gilbert and Sullivan reference, but then when they try to tell the other protagonist of their revelation, they're stymied by a farcical number of missed phone calls, undelivered notes, and general misunderstandings. Rinse and repeat until the book is a probably a bit longer than it really needed to be, and you've got the basic outline of a Connie Willis novel.
So yeah, there's a formula. But the thing is, she does it really, *really* well. She sucks you right in, and you don't mind that the book feels really familiar, and then when you think you've got everything figured out, and wonder how there could possibly be another 200 pages, she twists things just enough that you realize you probably won't be going to bed for at least another 3 chapters. And yeah, maybe it still is a bit too long, and maybe some of the deductive leaps that the characters make are a bit implausible, but that's fine. It's wonderful writing, with wonderful characters, and you'll laugh, and you'll cry, and you learn a bunch about whatever personal obsession Willis decided to write her book around, and not regret a moment of it. It's formulaic, but it's also unique, and I hope she never stops writing.
So yeah, there's a formula. But the thing is, she does it really, *really* well. She sucks you right in, and you don't mind that the book feels really familiar, and then when you think you've got everything figured out, and wonder how there could possibly be another 200 pages, she twists things just enough that you realize you probably won't be going to bed for at least another 3 chapters. And yeah, maybe it still is a bit too long, and maybe some of the deductive leaps that the characters make are a bit implausible, but that's fine. It's wonderful writing, with wonderful characters, and you'll laugh, and you'll cry, and you learn a bunch about whatever personal obsession Willis decided to write her book around, and not regret a moment of it. It's formulaic, but it's also unique, and I hope she never stops writing.
January 21, 2008
"Passage" is a remarkable work from a remarkable author. I've read it at least twice and it still blows me away. Willis treats the great question of what happens when we die with humor and sadness. Her treatment of the subject of dementia rang especially true. I had visited my grandmother in the nursing home (many, many miles away) when she was very far gone with senile dementia. She was completely unaware of her surrounding. Some of the things she was saying were eerily echoed in "Passage." I highly recommend this book.
April 5, 2018
Dr. Joanna Lander is a psychologist collecting first-hand accounts of NDEs -- near-death experiences -- at a Denver hospital. Frustrated by new-age Mr. Mandrake, who keeps getting to patients ahead of her and polluting their accounts with leading questions and suggestions, Joanna eagerly joins forces with Dr. Wright, who is experimenting with simulating NDEs. However, finding volunteers who meet the criteria is tough, and keeping them is even harder. Joanna decides she should be a subject herself � and to tell anything else would spoil the story.I first looked at this back a few years ago, when I had just finished and was looking for another Connie Willis fix of the same caliber. But the description to this one sounded startlingly different, and I put it back on the shelf and forgot about it. Then Siren Sarah mentioned her ongoing deep love for Connie Willis, and I decided it was time to read this.
And it was the right time, because I really enjoyed and admired this book, which was perfect for the year I’ve been having since October.
On the one hand, I agree with numerous reviewers that the story is a bit too long, especially in the middle section when Joanna is running all over the hospital, half the people she needs to find are out with the flu, and no one is reachable by telephone, which felt very much like revisited. (Although at least this one is set firmly in the late 1990’s rather than sometime in the future, so the lack of mobile phones and the difficulty reaching people is true to the time.) I think 50 to 100 pages could be cut without anyone particularly noticing.
But on the other hand, all that running around, plus the ridiculous layout of the hospital, where nothing is reachable in anything resembling a straight line, turns out to be a reflection of a late-story discovery, and I was left applauding the author’s genius in setting it up that way. There’s also a shocking plot twist which left me desperately wanting to return to all the seemingly pointless bouncing about between characters and locations, and that effect on me was so true to life that it also reinforces Connie Willis’s brilliance.
Also brilliant: all the characters. Even the most minor characters were well-developed and acted/sounded just like real people, with their own internal lives and agendas. Maisie, a 9-year-old heart patient, is both adorably precocious and darkly grim without crossing the line into annoying (well, not any more annoying than 9-year-olds in general can set their minds to being). Mr. Beardsley, Joanna’s former high school teacher who has early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, is touchingly drawn.
This whole book is a great mix of comedy and sadness, and I really enjoyed it. I don’t want to say much more. Just thanks to Sarah for reminding me I needed to read it!
March 22, 2008
This book left me reeling- it forces you to confront your own mortality. When I finished the book, I literally just laid on my bed with my eyes wide open. I suggested it to a friend, but she it found it "too difficult" to get into. If you're up for a deeply moving experience, I cannot recommend this book enough.
April 18, 2010
I went to the library to check out Willis' Doomsday, but this was the only Connie Willis book available...
There's a reason for that. It was awful.
The plot plods along and, as mentioned before, the running gags are not only referenced too frequently, but they don't lend anything worthwhile to the story. The cafeteria's always closed, hallways are constantly being painted, Joanna never remembers to eat lunch but Richard's lab coat is magically a vending machine, poorly written comedy ensues... yeah, we get it.
The characters are painfully one-dimensional, like caricatures. There is a character, Maisie, who is supposed to be a child, probably 6-10 years old, and the dialogue Willis gives her is painful. Nobody speaks like that, let alone a child in 2001 (when the book was written). Seriously, who uses the word "crummy" for anything?? (Or mentions deviled ham dip again and again, for that matter.)
Another problem is that Dr. Joanna Landers and her associate Dr. Wright both seem to be physically unable to end a conversation, even if they're in a hurry. Make that, "especially if they are in a hurry." There are pages and pages of this book devoted to Joanna or Richard thinking, "Ugh! I really must leave!" "I am running so late!" "Why won't he stop talking to me, I wish I could escape!"
It's maddening. I realize it probably bothers me especially, because it sums up my relationship with this book. The writing is sloppy. The plot is dull. It is poorly edited... and yet, like Joanna and Richard, I couldn't end the conversation. I wanted to give the book the benefit of the doubt; my hope was that Willis would get it together in the end and blow me away.
She didn't. Don't read this book--it's too long to be worth it. Save yourself!
There's a reason for that. It was awful.
The plot plods along and, as mentioned before, the running gags are not only referenced too frequently, but they don't lend anything worthwhile to the story. The cafeteria's always closed, hallways are constantly being painted, Joanna never remembers to eat lunch but Richard's lab coat is magically a vending machine, poorly written comedy ensues... yeah, we get it.
The characters are painfully one-dimensional, like caricatures. There is a character, Maisie, who is supposed to be a child, probably 6-10 years old, and the dialogue Willis gives her is painful. Nobody speaks like that, let alone a child in 2001 (when the book was written). Seriously, who uses the word "crummy" for anything?? (Or mentions deviled ham dip again and again, for that matter.)
Another problem is that Dr. Joanna Landers and her associate Dr. Wright both seem to be physically unable to end a conversation, even if they're in a hurry. Make that, "especially if they are in a hurry." There are pages and pages of this book devoted to Joanna or Richard thinking, "Ugh! I really must leave!" "I am running so late!" "Why won't he stop talking to me, I wish I could escape!"
It's maddening. I realize it probably bothers me especially, because it sums up my relationship with this book. The writing is sloppy. The plot is dull. It is poorly edited... and yet, like Joanna and Richard, I couldn't end the conversation. I wanted to give the book the benefit of the doubt; my hope was that Willis would get it together in the end and blow me away.
She didn't. Don't read this book--it's too long to be worth it. Save yourself!
July 6, 2020
I landed on a 4-ish stars (maybe 4.25?), partly because of things that aren't exactly the book's fault, like how aspects of it just feel adorably dated. I also find that even when I love a Connie Willis book, there is a distance with character feelings especially when it comes to romance. Which is fine! But I find myself filling in a lot of the gaps, re: the shipping and man the books would just be perfect with more depth to character feeling/romance...
I actually started this two years ago and then got waylaid by book 2 revisions. I came back to it last week determined to finish it, as the whole reason I picked it up was I heard it had a Titanic plotline. My historical catnip! Indeed, the Titanic bits were delightful, though also funny as a few small bits of scholarship have shifted... as have opinions about the movie (Willis was clearly kneedeep in late 90s Titanic backlash when she wrote this!). That is a thing to know if this book intrigues you: it is adorably, almost laughably entrenched in the late 90s. A major aspect of the plot is video tapes/Blockbuster video. Everyone has a pager and oh how cell phones would have solved several plot issues. There's no internet search engines for the main character to use to look up information. Indeed, it's a long book that could have been effectively trimmed with said shortcuts (instead of Joanna spending 50+ pages waiting for Vielle, Kit or Maisie to look something up in a book, imagine if she'd used Google!). It was a fun blast from the past, though, given I still very vividly remember the period.
But beyond the superficial funny bits: it's an interesting character-driven sci-fi that ends up getting REALLY intense and deep and real in the third act. The last half hit me like a bag of bricks to the face, as it explored and stated things about death, dying, and grief that resonated with me intensely. I cried several times. It was painful to push through at times, it got so real. I looked up who Willis had lost because I just *knew*, and indeed: it was her mom, when she was 12. This is a tricky one if you are grieving, or generally having big, morbid thoughts about death/dying/and the afterlife. Ultimately, it was cathartic for me, but also difficult.
The basic gist is doctors Joanna and Richard are studying NDEs--near death experiences--by inducing them chemically and then taking detailed reports of what people see, looking for similarities--and hopefully a key to what NDEs are. When it becomes clear they don't have enough reliable subjects, Joanna volunteers to go under. She does, and is thunderstruck--why is she seeing the Titanic? A huge component of the book is the "life of the hospital"--we only really see Joanna's life there, and when it's in Richard's POV (it's third person that sometimes shifts back and forth between them)--and all the quirks of that world. The maze of the hospital, crazy things going down in the ER, a quack religious zealot doctor harassing Joanna about "proof" that NDEs prove the existence of heaven (if you're super religious this book won't be for you, btw), a few wacky patients, and finally Maisie--a young girl dying of heart failure who is obsessed with disasters (and ends up helping Joanna with research). There's also a major subplot where Joanna seeks out her former high school English teacher (b/c of a clue in her NDE), but he has Alzheimers so she becomes friends with his niece, Kit.
It's very character driven book, with a low simmering sci-fi undercurrent. Honestly just the way I like it. That said, because it's in third person and not super close third person, there are stretches that feel more distanced than others--very effective in some sections, less so in others. Probably the biggest deficit for me overall, as I mentioned, was the lack of deep connection, romantic chemistry, and build up between Richard and Joanna. I wouldn't care if the book wasn't trying to have any romance... but then in act 3 Joanna says she loves Richard? And there are indications of his similar strong feelings for her. Me: WHERE THO? There's a mini-thread of Tish, one of the nurses, trying to "hook" Richard and failing because he's oblivious and she says to Joanna "He's all yours," so clearly the book was trying to establish some kind of thread... I felt the same way about Black Out/All Clear, a duology I adore... but man did I want more shipping in it. Willis requires a lot of reading between the lines, whereas if you're going to have romance, I prefer it to be a more forward part of the arc. Could have cut some plotty back & forth to have some more meaningful character interactions with Joanna and Richard, IMO. BUT... I mean ultimately that quibble doesn't diminish that gut punch of a third act.
I actually started this two years ago and then got waylaid by book 2 revisions. I came back to it last week determined to finish it, as the whole reason I picked it up was I heard it had a Titanic plotline. My historical catnip! Indeed, the Titanic bits were delightful, though also funny as a few small bits of scholarship have shifted... as have opinions about the movie (Willis was clearly kneedeep in late 90s Titanic backlash when she wrote this!). That is a thing to know if this book intrigues you: it is adorably, almost laughably entrenched in the late 90s. A major aspect of the plot is video tapes/Blockbuster video. Everyone has a pager and oh how cell phones would have solved several plot issues. There's no internet search engines for the main character to use to look up information. Indeed, it's a long book that could have been effectively trimmed with said shortcuts (instead of Joanna spending 50+ pages waiting for Vielle, Kit or Maisie to look something up in a book, imagine if she'd used Google!). It was a fun blast from the past, though, given I still very vividly remember the period.
But beyond the superficial funny bits: it's an interesting character-driven sci-fi that ends up getting REALLY intense and deep and real in the third act. The last half hit me like a bag of bricks to the face, as it explored and stated things about death, dying, and grief that resonated with me intensely. I cried several times. It was painful to push through at times, it got so real. I looked up who Willis had lost because I just *knew*, and indeed: it was her mom, when she was 12. This is a tricky one if you are grieving, or generally having big, morbid thoughts about death/dying/and the afterlife. Ultimately, it was cathartic for me, but also difficult.
The basic gist is doctors Joanna and Richard are studying NDEs--near death experiences--by inducing them chemically and then taking detailed reports of what people see, looking for similarities--and hopefully a key to what NDEs are. When it becomes clear they don't have enough reliable subjects, Joanna volunteers to go under. She does, and is thunderstruck--why is she seeing the Titanic? A huge component of the book is the "life of the hospital"--we only really see Joanna's life there, and when it's in Richard's POV (it's third person that sometimes shifts back and forth between them)--and all the quirks of that world. The maze of the hospital, crazy things going down in the ER, a quack religious zealot doctor harassing Joanna about "proof" that NDEs prove the existence of heaven (if you're super religious this book won't be for you, btw), a few wacky patients, and finally Maisie--a young girl dying of heart failure who is obsessed with disasters (and ends up helping Joanna with research). There's also a major subplot where Joanna seeks out her former high school English teacher (b/c of a clue in her NDE), but he has Alzheimers so she becomes friends with his niece, Kit.
It's very character driven book, with a low simmering sci-fi undercurrent. Honestly just the way I like it. That said, because it's in third person and not super close third person, there are stretches that feel more distanced than others--very effective in some sections, less so in others. Probably the biggest deficit for me overall, as I mentioned, was the lack of deep connection, romantic chemistry, and build up between Richard and Joanna. I wouldn't care if the book wasn't trying to have any romance... but then in act 3 Joanna says she loves Richard? And there are indications of his similar strong feelings for her. Me: WHERE THO? There's a mini-thread of Tish, one of the nurses, trying to "hook" Richard and failing because he's oblivious and she says to Joanna "He's all yours," so clearly the book was trying to establish some kind of thread... I felt the same way about Black Out/All Clear, a duology I adore... but man did I want more shipping in it. Willis requires a lot of reading between the lines, whereas if you're going to have romance, I prefer it to be a more forward part of the arc. Could have cut some plotty back & forth to have some more meaningful character interactions with Joanna and Richard, IMO. BUT... I mean ultimately that quibble doesn't diminish that gut punch of a third act.
September 29, 2013
Connie Willis excels at meshing humorously satirical commentary on interpersonal relationships with insights into the human condition that are so true they almost hurt. In 'Passage,' Joanna Lander is a researcher at a large hospital investigating near-death experiences. Her work is complicated by the difficulty of interviewing people who are near-death, but especially by the new-age charlatan who insists on being considered her colleague, Dr. Mandrake. Much of Joanna's time consists of trying to avoid Mandrake, but then she meets Dr. Wright, who has found a way, he believes, to simulate the near-death experience using drugs. Intrigued, Joanna joins him on his project - but a comedy of errors results in the project having not nearly enough volunteers, and Joanna herself decides to go under, and experience the NDE. Gradually, the mood changes from comedic to an increasingly frantic, obsessive, chaotic experience, as Joanna believes she is discovering truths about the NDE - but strangely, her experiences all seem to be tied to the Titanic disaster. People can't go to the sinking Titanic when they die - can they? She has the elusive feeling that she is missing some vital connection, always just on the edge of her consciousness.
January 29, 2018
First things first: This is a spoiler-free review. And if you're considering reading "Passage," don't read the Wikipedia article about it first; that article includes in passing a spoiler for the most significant plot twist in the book, about three-quarters of the way through the tale.
"Passage" focuses on two researchers (Joanna Lander and Richard Wright) of near-death experiences (NDEs), on their subjects and friends (especially a sharp-as-a-tack nine-year-old cardiac patient, Maisie, and Joanna's former high-school English teacher, now with Alzheimer's), on a charlatan NDE author, and on the NDEs themselves--what they might be, what they could represent, how they work. Joanna and Richard are stymied at almost every point not just by the difficulties of investigating a controversial and difficult-to-explain phenomenon but also by the myriad vicissitudes of daily life in a maze of a hospital and by uncooperative or unreliable subjects. Willis's trademark device (also on display in "Doomsday Book") of highlighting maddeningly frustrating people and situations (especially the difficulty scheduling subjects, subjects that are either too voluble or too laconic, and the warren of passageways in the hospital) is on full view in "Passage." Some have said that it goes too far, and I myself found it irritating here. But I think that Willis *means* for it to irritate us; our frustration means that she's been successful in reminding us of how often in our own lives thick things are at the mercy of thin ones. These annoyances are not only exasperating but also slow down the pace of the novel, especially in the middle. But I'm one of those who like good novels to be long ones--the more pages that are left, the longer I get to enjoy the read! (I'm reminded of 'Ali ibn al-Jahm: "If I find a book agreeable and enjoyable, and if I deem it to be beneficial, you will see me hour after hour checking how many pages are left, from fear of being close to the end. If it has many volumes with a great number of pages, my life is complete and my happiness total.") And it's not until late in the novel that we see that the frustrations are also part of a larger metaphor of paths trying to be taken, of messages trying to get through.
The length of the novel also gave me time to get acquainted with the characters so gradually that when the pace quickened later on I realized how very much I had come to care for them. I happened to read Ursula K. Le Guin's short and spare "The Lathe of Heaven" while I was reading "Passage," which is a Mahler to Le Guin's Sibelius in "Lathe." (In a famous exchange, Sibelius said that a symphony needed to be a parable; Mahler, known for his long symphonies, insisted that it needed to encompass the world. I love both Sibelius and Mahler, and each of them had a point.) Both novels are about a researcher trying (with, in each story, the aid of a machine) to understand and influence a difficult-to-characterize state of consciousness (in "Lathe," it's "effective dreaming"). And I loved "Lathe" and gave it five stars here on ŷ. But "Passage," partly because of Willis's skill but also partly because of its length, drew me in even more in some ways than "Lathe" did. "Passage" has its faults, but the ways in which Willis weaves together even initially seemingly unrelated threads into her grand pattern, and the eventual fates of her characters, are so far above a five here that my summed final grade has to be a five. It's not just Joanna and Richard; even the minor characters are sharply drawn. And very little gets past Maisie, who is an absolute delight. I can understand why Locus science-fiction critic Gary Wolfe writes that she "owns the spiritual center of the novel," although my vote is still for Richard and especially Joanna. (And I second Jo Walton's opinion that "[t]he chapter from Maisie's point of view after she has been lied to is one of the best things Willis has ever written . . .".) I feel as if I really know all these people, and I miss them already.
Just as in "Doomsday Book" and "Lincoln's Dreams," Willis also gives us fascinating historical detail (here, of the Titanic, the Yorktown, the Hindenburg, the Hartford circus fire, the Great Molasses Flood, and famous and not-so-famous last words). My reaction to what happens at and after the stunner three-quarters of the way through the story reminded me in all the right ways of how I felt at the end of her "Doomsday Book" (set largely in 1348 England during the Black Death)--in the words of Emily Dickinson, "After great pain, a formal feeling comes. The Nerves sit ceremonious, like tombs." And the ending of "Passage" ties up loose ends from one perspective but is satisfyingly ambiguous from another.
All in all, this is one of those books that I loved so much that I was sad to finish it, although I hope that it won't be the last time that I read it! A thoughtful book, with a compelling and believable plot (in part a mystery peppered with clues that were there from the very beginning and that I now want to go back to appreciate in context), artful exposition of its central metaphor (and a lovely incorporation of literary support for that theme from Joanna's memories of her high-school English teacher and from what comes from him despite his Alzheimer's), and vivid and unforgettable characterization. Highly recommended!
"Passage" focuses on two researchers (Joanna Lander and Richard Wright) of near-death experiences (NDEs), on their subjects and friends (especially a sharp-as-a-tack nine-year-old cardiac patient, Maisie, and Joanna's former high-school English teacher, now with Alzheimer's), on a charlatan NDE author, and on the NDEs themselves--what they might be, what they could represent, how they work. Joanna and Richard are stymied at almost every point not just by the difficulties of investigating a controversial and difficult-to-explain phenomenon but also by the myriad vicissitudes of daily life in a maze of a hospital and by uncooperative or unreliable subjects. Willis's trademark device (also on display in "Doomsday Book") of highlighting maddeningly frustrating people and situations (especially the difficulty scheduling subjects, subjects that are either too voluble or too laconic, and the warren of passageways in the hospital) is on full view in "Passage." Some have said that it goes too far, and I myself found it irritating here. But I think that Willis *means* for it to irritate us; our frustration means that she's been successful in reminding us of how often in our own lives thick things are at the mercy of thin ones. These annoyances are not only exasperating but also slow down the pace of the novel, especially in the middle. But I'm one of those who like good novels to be long ones--the more pages that are left, the longer I get to enjoy the read! (I'm reminded of 'Ali ibn al-Jahm: "If I find a book agreeable and enjoyable, and if I deem it to be beneficial, you will see me hour after hour checking how many pages are left, from fear of being close to the end. If it has many volumes with a great number of pages, my life is complete and my happiness total.") And it's not until late in the novel that we see that the frustrations are also part of a larger metaphor of paths trying to be taken, of messages trying to get through.
The length of the novel also gave me time to get acquainted with the characters so gradually that when the pace quickened later on I realized how very much I had come to care for them. I happened to read Ursula K. Le Guin's short and spare "The Lathe of Heaven" while I was reading "Passage," which is a Mahler to Le Guin's Sibelius in "Lathe." (In a famous exchange, Sibelius said that a symphony needed to be a parable; Mahler, known for his long symphonies, insisted that it needed to encompass the world. I love both Sibelius and Mahler, and each of them had a point.) Both novels are about a researcher trying (with, in each story, the aid of a machine) to understand and influence a difficult-to-characterize state of consciousness (in "Lathe," it's "effective dreaming"). And I loved "Lathe" and gave it five stars here on ŷ. But "Passage," partly because of Willis's skill but also partly because of its length, drew me in even more in some ways than "Lathe" did. "Passage" has its faults, but the ways in which Willis weaves together even initially seemingly unrelated threads into her grand pattern, and the eventual fates of her characters, are so far above a five here that my summed final grade has to be a five. It's not just Joanna and Richard; even the minor characters are sharply drawn. And very little gets past Maisie, who is an absolute delight. I can understand why Locus science-fiction critic Gary Wolfe writes that she "owns the spiritual center of the novel," although my vote is still for Richard and especially Joanna. (And I second Jo Walton's opinion that "[t]he chapter from Maisie's point of view after she has been lied to is one of the best things Willis has ever written . . .".) I feel as if I really know all these people, and I miss them already.
Just as in "Doomsday Book" and "Lincoln's Dreams," Willis also gives us fascinating historical detail (here, of the Titanic, the Yorktown, the Hindenburg, the Hartford circus fire, the Great Molasses Flood, and famous and not-so-famous last words). My reaction to what happens at and after the stunner three-quarters of the way through the story reminded me in all the right ways of how I felt at the end of her "Doomsday Book" (set largely in 1348 England during the Black Death)--in the words of Emily Dickinson, "After great pain, a formal feeling comes. The Nerves sit ceremonious, like tombs." And the ending of "Passage" ties up loose ends from one perspective but is satisfyingly ambiguous from another.
All in all, this is one of those books that I loved so much that I was sad to finish it, although I hope that it won't be the last time that I read it! A thoughtful book, with a compelling and believable plot (in part a mystery peppered with clues that were there from the very beginning and that I now want to go back to appreciate in context), artful exposition of its central metaphor (and a lovely incorporation of literary support for that theme from Joanna's memories of her high-school English teacher and from what comes from him despite his Alzheimer's), and vivid and unforgettable characterization. Highly recommended!
May 22, 2016
I cannot believe I am giving one star to a book written by Connie Willis. and are two of my all-time favorite novels--and I'm not even narrowing that down to sci-fi. But this was just a mess.
One of the recurring themes in Willis' novels seems to be institutional and technological dysfunction. In Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, this is kept within bounds and is mildly amusing. People keep missing each other, playing endless telephone tag, etc. But in Passage the confusion goes on for hundreds--and I mean HUNDREDS--of pages.
Passage is like one of those tiresome dreams where you are wandering around lost, looking for something or someone, having that feeling that you are running late but you can't remember for what. And you can't wake up. Maybe that's a deliberate commentary on dying and life after death ("...for in that sleep of death what dreams may come....") but I kept thinking it it was all just a crashing bore.
I kept going hoping for the clever twist the jacket blurb promised me. *Sigh* put it all far more concisely and effectively in the famous scene with Harry and Dumbledore in
“Tell me one last thing,� said Harry. “Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?�
Dumbledore beamed at him, and his voice sounded loud and strong in Harry’s ears even though the bright mist was descending again, obscuring his figure.
“Of course it’s happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?�
One of the recurring themes in Willis' novels seems to be institutional and technological dysfunction. In Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, this is kept within bounds and is mildly amusing. People keep missing each other, playing endless telephone tag, etc. But in Passage the confusion goes on for hundreds--and I mean HUNDREDS--of pages.
Passage is like one of those tiresome dreams where you are wandering around lost, looking for something or someone, having that feeling that you are running late but you can't remember for what. And you can't wake up. Maybe that's a deliberate commentary on dying and life after death ("...for in that sleep of death what dreams may come....") but I kept thinking it it was all just a crashing bore.
I kept going hoping for the clever twist the jacket blurb promised me. *Sigh* put it all far more concisely and effectively in the famous scene with Harry and Dumbledore in
“Tell me one last thing,� said Harry. “Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?�
Dumbledore beamed at him, and his voice sounded loud and strong in Harry’s ears even though the bright mist was descending again, obscuring his figure.
“Of course it’s happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?�
June 14, 2009
haven't read a book that knocked the breath out of me like this one did in approximately, like, an eon. cerebral, intensely emotional, + passages of airtight suspense. i feel like i raved about the last willis book i read, too. didn't i? (my account's nifty already-read backlog tells me that i indeed did.) yes, the author could've shaved off a hundred pages or three, and the har-har elbowed joke of a supporting character cast (all! of them! stereotyped to the last dotted i and crossed t!) got pretty old after 700 pages of detecktifying. but. BUT. maybe i am jaded and made a crabby cynic by today's pantheon of contemporary literature luminaries -- but this book, which is built around a sci-fi premise, felt like a slap of cold water after all those snooty literary navelgazers, oh my god. to maintain suspense over the aforementioned 700 pages and to keep the reader in relentless page-turning mode over the same number of pages is no small feat. and yeah, the plot took a careening, breathless 180 -- /twice/. i spent the last third of the book bursting sporadically into tears. philosophical issues, death and loss and loneliness, of having the strength to move on after terrible tragedies, yeah it may sound silly and maxed out on the cheese but lemme tell you this book made me afraid of death which /nothing/ does, to say the least the last time i sat in a darkened room watching a drivers' safety video with a dozen other dozing high schoolers.
maybe the thing i loved about it the best was that this was a reverent, down-on-the-knees tribute to literature enacted by a couple of scientists -- that literature and science were melded so artfully in its thematic DNA. A++ for that. A++ in general. except for the christian revivalist quacks. anything but christian revivalist quacks.
maybe the thing i loved about it the best was that this was a reverent, down-on-the-knees tribute to literature enacted by a couple of scientists -- that literature and science were melded so artfully in its thematic DNA. A++ for that. A++ in general. except for the christian revivalist quacks. anything but christian revivalist quacks.
March 9, 2024
Connie Willis is one of my favorite writers. Unfortunately, Passage did not keep me as spellbound as some of her others works. Still her style and form is great as always and it is just me who is somewhat lukewarm about the premises and setting of this particular novel
June 14, 2024
A thoughtful meditation on memory, death, love and survival. And the Titanic. and Blockbuster. A 780 page book with no action and incredible amounts of dialogue, yet it had me hooked. This was so 90's and couldn't be me here for it. Bravo Connie.
May 27, 2018
In Passage, two doctors, Joanna Lander and Richard Wright, team up to study NDEs (near death experiences), hoping their research will assist with reviving patients who are coding (going into cardio arrest). The scifi aspect comes in when Dr Wright comes up with a cocktail of drugs that replicates a NDE in a healthy person. In true Willis comedic fashion, the number of volunteers the doctors have lined up for the trial dwindles to such an extent that Joanna herself decides to go under and experience a NDE firsthand. This is where the tension begins to build and the drama unfolds until a climactic moment that no reader will ever see coming.
This is the fifth Willis novel I've read and I've become very familiar with her style. I can understand why some people become frustrated with it when reading her books, but I just continue to adore it and her.
Willis always has pop culture/historical moments she references throughout her books. For example she incorporated Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers novels into her Oxford series plotlines as well as events such as the Blitz and the Black Death. In Passage, she references many movies and uses disasters to make her plotline more relatable to the modern reader, in particular the sinking of the Titanic.
Willis's research must always be extensive because without a doubt you’ll learn more about the Titanic from this novel than you will from any other source. (And fear not, if you’re like me and hate the movie, you’ll still love the references to it in this book.) I was not as familiar with any of the other disasters mentioned: the Great Molasses Flood (who knew?), the Hartford circus fire, and the Hindenburg, so it was interesting to learn about these events.
The other thing Willis does in every book is include a plethora of physical reasons the characters can’t find solutions to their problems. Passage is set is in the 90s, so there is no internet and very limited mobile use. Willis includes phones and pagers which aren’t answered, messages that aren’t passed on, and books that can’t be located. The physical layout of the setting, a hospital, is also one large stumbling block for the characters, with its labyrinth of walkways, blocked off stairways and lifts that only reach certain levels.
While some readers might be frustrated or lost at why she is including such frivolous details, others will see that everything has its place and reason and nothing is as random as it seems. And, in particular with Passage, it’s a metaphor!
Another thing Willis does really well is supporting characters. They’re always so different and detailed and just as important to the stories as the lead characters (actually, there is often a question of who is a lead character and who isn't, I would sometimes argue her books are true ensemble pieces). The standout in Passage for me was young Maisie, who has spent a large chunk of her life in hospital and is on the heart transplant list. Everything comes back to her in the end and tears will be involved.
Just as a warning, yes, there definitely will be tears. They might creep up on you when you least expect it too. (For me, it was a moment featuring Joanna’s clothes and makeup.) However, even though death is the main subject, Willis handles this with such aplomb that nothing gets overly depressing or maudlin and at times death feels quite inspirational (as young Maise proves at one point, there are worse things than death).
As per usual, Willis offers us many emotional and intellectual themes in amongst her deceptively basic scifi plot. You’ll think about your faith a lot whilst reading Passage. There’s also a strong theme of friendship and the sense of family with friends versus true blood relatives. These themes were all majorly covered at one time or another in the Oxford time travel series yet this didn't annoy me and only reinforced some of my previous personal conclusions.
I fret for people who dismiss Willis's work because it's scifi. Yes, her books are scifi, but they’re so realistic you’ll forget you’re reading scifi within a few chapters. They don’t fit easily into any genre in fact. Yes, there’s hints of romance in all her books but they are merely hints. (Passage had an undercurrent of romance that I was not expecting at all but I found myself really enjoying it.) They are comedies and tragedies and very much literature.
She is truly one of the most deceptively intelligent writers there has ever been and with so many layers to her writing, it’s difficult to cover everything in a couple of hundred words review. Let’s just say, like all her other novels, I can’t recommend Passage enough.
Another obvious 5 out of 5
This is the fifth Willis novel I've read and I've become very familiar with her style. I can understand why some people become frustrated with it when reading her books, but I just continue to adore it and her.
Willis always has pop culture/historical moments she references throughout her books. For example she incorporated Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers novels into her Oxford series plotlines as well as events such as the Blitz and the Black Death. In Passage, she references many movies and uses disasters to make her plotline more relatable to the modern reader, in particular the sinking of the Titanic.
Willis's research must always be extensive because without a doubt you’ll learn more about the Titanic from this novel than you will from any other source. (And fear not, if you’re like me and hate the movie, you’ll still love the references to it in this book.) I was not as familiar with any of the other disasters mentioned: the Great Molasses Flood (who knew?), the Hartford circus fire, and the Hindenburg, so it was interesting to learn about these events.
The other thing Willis does in every book is include a plethora of physical reasons the characters can’t find solutions to their problems. Passage is set is in the 90s, so there is no internet and very limited mobile use. Willis includes phones and pagers which aren’t answered, messages that aren’t passed on, and books that can’t be located. The physical layout of the setting, a hospital, is also one large stumbling block for the characters, with its labyrinth of walkways, blocked off stairways and lifts that only reach certain levels.
While some readers might be frustrated or lost at why she is including such frivolous details, others will see that everything has its place and reason and nothing is as random as it seems. And, in particular with Passage, it’s a metaphor!
Another thing Willis does really well is supporting characters. They’re always so different and detailed and just as important to the stories as the lead characters (actually, there is often a question of who is a lead character and who isn't, I would sometimes argue her books are true ensemble pieces). The standout in Passage for me was young Maisie, who has spent a large chunk of her life in hospital and is on the heart transplant list. Everything comes back to her in the end and tears will be involved.
Just as a warning, yes, there definitely will be tears. They might creep up on you when you least expect it too. (For me, it was a moment featuring Joanna’s clothes and makeup.) However, even though death is the main subject, Willis handles this with such aplomb that nothing gets overly depressing or maudlin and at times death feels quite inspirational (as young Maise proves at one point, there are worse things than death).
As per usual, Willis offers us many emotional and intellectual themes in amongst her deceptively basic scifi plot. You’ll think about your faith a lot whilst reading Passage. There’s also a strong theme of friendship and the sense of family with friends versus true blood relatives. These themes were all majorly covered at one time or another in the Oxford time travel series yet this didn't annoy me and only reinforced some of my previous personal conclusions.
I fret for people who dismiss Willis's work because it's scifi. Yes, her books are scifi, but they’re so realistic you’ll forget you’re reading scifi within a few chapters. They don’t fit easily into any genre in fact. Yes, there’s hints of romance in all her books but they are merely hints. (Passage had an undercurrent of romance that I was not expecting at all but I found myself really enjoying it.) They are comedies and tragedies and very much literature.
She is truly one of the most deceptively intelligent writers there has ever been and with so many layers to her writing, it’s difficult to cover everything in a couple of hundred words review. Let’s just say, like all her other novels, I can’t recommend Passage enough.
Another obvious 5 out of 5
November 12, 2012
I FINISHED IT. Why did I finish it? I don't know. This book was unbelievably repetitive. The characters weren't fully-formed. It was repetitive. Passage took about 700 pages to decide what it wanted to be. It needed to be at least 300 pages shorter.
Things Willis should have cut: the heavy foreshadowing about rogue, anything to do with the cafeteria, Mr. Mandrake, Mr. Wojakowski (or at least his endless, repetitive anecdotes), medical acronyms used repeatedly without explanation (we don't need to know every single thing that people say or think), Dr. Wright's magic pockets that produce an insane amount of food... I could go on, but I'm not the editor. And hey, did you know Maisie isn't your average little girl? Did you? DID YOU? Because it will be pounded into your head. She doesn't like The Sound of Music, see! How unusual!
Hey, is the cafeteria closed? Is it hard to navigate the hospital? Will Joanna and Vielle discuss their damn Dish Night about seventeen hundred times? (Hey, watching movies on a regular basis is almost a character trait, right? No?) You will be reminded of those things over and over and over.
Also, many scenes transitioned extremely oddly. For example, a character asks Joanna a question, and Joanna thinks of the answer the next day in another location without any transition whatsoever. In the same paragraph. It was jarring every time.
The basic premise of Passage is interesting. I want to like it. Parts of the book were even decent, but it took about 700 pages to get there.
Things Willis should have cut: the heavy foreshadowing about rogue, anything to do with the cafeteria, Mr. Mandrake, Mr. Wojakowski (or at least his endless, repetitive anecdotes), medical acronyms used repeatedly without explanation (we don't need to know every single thing that people say or think), Dr. Wright's magic pockets that produce an insane amount of food... I could go on, but I'm not the editor. And hey, did you know Maisie isn't your average little girl? Did you? DID YOU? Because it will be pounded into your head. She doesn't like The Sound of Music, see! How unusual!
Hey, is the cafeteria closed? Is it hard to navigate the hospital? Will Joanna and Vielle discuss their damn Dish Night about seventeen hundred times? (Hey, watching movies on a regular basis is almost a character trait, right? No?) You will be reminded of those things over and over and over.
Also, many scenes transitioned extremely oddly. For example, a character asks Joanna a question, and Joanna thinks of the answer the next day in another location without any transition whatsoever. In the same paragraph. It was jarring every time.
The basic premise of Passage is interesting. I want to like it. Parts of the book were even decent, but it took about 700 pages to get there.
March 8, 2016
What an amazing book! As a huge Connie Willis fan, I had been wanting to read Passage for a long time and it didn’t disappoint. Willis manages to surprise the reader with every book she writes as she explores diverse styles and subject matters. She also has a talent for finding the comedic potential of the least likely situations. I don’t want to go into a detailed review of Passage so has not to give spoilers about what happens in the book. Suffice it to say that Willis� exploration of Near Death Experiences (NDEs) is complex, profound, amusing, full of surprises, shocking and riveting, all at the same time. It’s true that this book stays and resonates with you long after you finish reading it. Well it did with me anyway! The only reason why I didn’t give Passage five stars is that the pace of the book slows down quite a bit near the middle, mostly because of the repeated comic incidents involving the hospital’s maze of stairways and corridors. I’m glad this didn’t stop me from reading for the best was yet to come. This is definitely the best book I've read so far this year and I highly recommend it!
April 16, 2012
Only Connie Willis could make me love a science-fiction novel about two doctors researching near-death experiences and their potential medical scope. The entire book is a buildup to a metaphor about life and death and grief, and when, about two thirds of the way through, Willis connects the threads and the metaphor comes together, the story proceeds in a way I could never have predicted, a way that's daring and gutwrenching and the only way she could possibly have taken her story.
Passage - because it's so brave, and because it's so real - isn't an easy read. But it is a worthwhile one.
Passage - because it's so brave, and because it's so real - isn't an easy read. But it is a worthwhile one.
January 21, 2025
Passage - Connie Willis
6/26/2001
09/26/2016
Four days ago I wrote a really touching and lengthy review of this book, all about how Willis makes me cry, but it feels earned, and how she is brilliant at portraying a busy work day, and the way some part of the hospital is always closed off, and some part is always being worked on, and how getting there from here is always impossible. And not one, but two different places failed to save it. So now I just can't even, I'm so vexed.
Library copy because I can't find my personal copy
6/26/2001
09/26/2016
Four days ago I wrote a really touching and lengthy review of this book, all about how Willis makes me cry, but it feels earned, and how she is brilliant at portraying a busy work day, and the way some part of the hospital is always closed off, and some part is always being worked on, and how getting there from here is always impossible. And not one, but two different places failed to save it. So now I just can't even, I'm so vexed.
Library copy because I can't find my personal copy
November 30, 2016
"I must go in, the fog is rising." -- Emily Dickinson's last words
"Why, man, they couldn't hit an elephant at this dist--" -- American Civil War General John Sedgwick's last words, at the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse
"I beg your pardon, monsieur. I did not mean to do it." -- Marie Antoniette, after she had accidentally stepped on the executioner's foot while mounting the guillotine
"Oh, sh!t." -- Last words found on the majority of flight recorders recovered after plane crashes
"I shall hear in heaven." -- Beethoven's last words
Of the many well-researched and interesting details included in this novel, my favorite is that each new chapter starts out with a quote from a famous person near death. They range from the humorous to the heartbreaking to the ironic, and each suits the chapter it introduces perfectly. Each quote adds to the power of this novel to make the reader think. Think about what we avoid thinking and talking about often to absurd extremes, despite the fact that it is the one certainty in life, and what happens when we all make that final passage.
Passage by Connie Willis is not a morbid book, despite the subject matter, nor is it a horror story along the lines of Flatliners. It is a fascinating novel that explores the concept of near death experiences (NDEs). Are these phenomena spiritual events? Purely biological firings of a dying brain? Both? Or perhaps something else entirely? If you are interested in such musings, enjoy an intelligently written story and are open minded about what NDEs might mean, this book is excellent reading.
NDEs as science versus divine vision
Set in the present day, Dr. Joanna Lander is a psychologist studying NDEs by interviewing hospital patients who have recently "coded" or temporarily lost all vital signs. She is constantly trying to interview patients before a colleague at the same hospital, a Mr. Mandrake, can interview them. Mandrake does his best to manipulate the patients' memories of the NDE to fit his own doctrine of NDEs -- a trite vision aptly described by one character in the book as a heaven composed of Precious Moments figurines.
Joanna herself holds no firm beliefs of what NDEs are or represent, she only wants to get as close to the objective truth as possible. A new scientist at the hospital, Dr. Richard Wright, has discovered a way to chemically induce NDEs, and he asks Joanna to work with him. Richard believes his study will prove these phenomena to be strictly biological rather than spiritual. Problems finding enough suitable patients for the study eventually result in Joanna herself volunteering to take the simulated near death journey herself, and she finds herself caught up in a tantalizing puzzle...Is what she sees real? Or is it indeed only the random firings of the dying brain? (I will say no more for fear of ruining the story.)
Characters from the intriguingly complex to the annoyingly cardboard
Joanna is an admirable, likable and sympathetic character, as are Richard, Joanna's best friend Vielle (an ER nurse at the hospital), Masie (a young girl in need of a heart transplant with a fascination for disaster stories), and a host of other characters that become part of the story line. There are a couple of characters in contrast who are not developed at all, who are portrayed as 100 percent negative. The aptly named Mr. Mandrake and one of his converts are so relentlessly annoying that Joanna spends a significant amount of time in the novel attempting to avoid them. Their broken-record personalities got very tedious to read about after a while.
The editor should be given a good talking to
Probably the biggest fault of this book -- and the reason I cannot give it five stars despite so many strengths -- is the overly detailed accounts of Joanna's investigation and slow -- and I mean S L O W -- piecing together of clues that will lead her to a conclusion about the meaning of NDEs. While the realistic detailing of solving the mystery is admirable, Willis falters here by frustrating the reader for too long and losing too much momentum. While I remained determined to read through and find out what would happen, I was very disappointed throughout a big chunk of the book. It does pick up again, and become even more compelling, but my resentment of those slow, plodding (and repetitive) chapters lingered.
Overall, a fascinating read, although not perfect
The story is intelligent, compelling, detailed (a bit too much at times), and as is often the case with Willis's novels, it includes a bit of romance as well. There are a few cardboard characters, but far more interesting ones. The descriptions of the world of near death experiences are often fascinating and moving. Willis also has a habit of reflecting the central theme of her story quite directly in the physical setting, and this book is no exception. The hospital where the majority of the story takes place is a convoluted maze of hallways and stairwells reminiscent of the complexity of the human brain. While there is a certain level of predictability through some of the story, there are many surprises, too. Overall this novel is a very good read, well worth plodding through the slower parts for, and a story that is not easily forgotten.
"Why, man, they couldn't hit an elephant at this dist--" -- American Civil War General John Sedgwick's last words, at the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse
"I beg your pardon, monsieur. I did not mean to do it." -- Marie Antoniette, after she had accidentally stepped on the executioner's foot while mounting the guillotine
"Oh, sh!t." -- Last words found on the majority of flight recorders recovered after plane crashes
"I shall hear in heaven." -- Beethoven's last words
Of the many well-researched and interesting details included in this novel, my favorite is that each new chapter starts out with a quote from a famous person near death. They range from the humorous to the heartbreaking to the ironic, and each suits the chapter it introduces perfectly. Each quote adds to the power of this novel to make the reader think. Think about what we avoid thinking and talking about often to absurd extremes, despite the fact that it is the one certainty in life, and what happens when we all make that final passage.
Passage by Connie Willis is not a morbid book, despite the subject matter, nor is it a horror story along the lines of Flatliners. It is a fascinating novel that explores the concept of near death experiences (NDEs). Are these phenomena spiritual events? Purely biological firings of a dying brain? Both? Or perhaps something else entirely? If you are interested in such musings, enjoy an intelligently written story and are open minded about what NDEs might mean, this book is excellent reading.
NDEs as science versus divine vision
Set in the present day, Dr. Joanna Lander is a psychologist studying NDEs by interviewing hospital patients who have recently "coded" or temporarily lost all vital signs. She is constantly trying to interview patients before a colleague at the same hospital, a Mr. Mandrake, can interview them. Mandrake does his best to manipulate the patients' memories of the NDE to fit his own doctrine of NDEs -- a trite vision aptly described by one character in the book as a heaven composed of Precious Moments figurines.
Joanna herself holds no firm beliefs of what NDEs are or represent, she only wants to get as close to the objective truth as possible. A new scientist at the hospital, Dr. Richard Wright, has discovered a way to chemically induce NDEs, and he asks Joanna to work with him. Richard believes his study will prove these phenomena to be strictly biological rather than spiritual. Problems finding enough suitable patients for the study eventually result in Joanna herself volunteering to take the simulated near death journey herself, and she finds herself caught up in a tantalizing puzzle...Is what she sees real? Or is it indeed only the random firings of the dying brain? (I will say no more for fear of ruining the story.)
Characters from the intriguingly complex to the annoyingly cardboard
Joanna is an admirable, likable and sympathetic character, as are Richard, Joanna's best friend Vielle (an ER nurse at the hospital), Masie (a young girl in need of a heart transplant with a fascination for disaster stories), and a host of other characters that become part of the story line. There are a couple of characters in contrast who are not developed at all, who are portrayed as 100 percent negative. The aptly named Mr. Mandrake and one of his converts are so relentlessly annoying that Joanna spends a significant amount of time in the novel attempting to avoid them. Their broken-record personalities got very tedious to read about after a while.
The editor should be given a good talking to
Probably the biggest fault of this book -- and the reason I cannot give it five stars despite so many strengths -- is the overly detailed accounts of Joanna's investigation and slow -- and I mean S L O W -- piecing together of clues that will lead her to a conclusion about the meaning of NDEs. While the realistic detailing of solving the mystery is admirable, Willis falters here by frustrating the reader for too long and losing too much momentum. While I remained determined to read through and find out what would happen, I was very disappointed throughout a big chunk of the book. It does pick up again, and become even more compelling, but my resentment of those slow, plodding (and repetitive) chapters lingered.
Overall, a fascinating read, although not perfect
The story is intelligent, compelling, detailed (a bit too much at times), and as is often the case with Willis's novels, it includes a bit of romance as well. There are a few cardboard characters, but far more interesting ones. The descriptions of the world of near death experiences are often fascinating and moving. Willis also has a habit of reflecting the central theme of her story quite directly in the physical setting, and this book is no exception. The hospital where the majority of the story takes place is a convoluted maze of hallways and stairwells reminiscent of the complexity of the human brain. While there is a certain level of predictability through some of the story, there are many surprises, too. Overall this novel is a very good read, well worth plodding through the slower parts for, and a story that is not easily forgotten.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 12, 2024
Passage by Connie Willis reminds me a lot of Korean dramas and movies in that despite being under a genre (i.e Drama, thriller or horror) the story can at one point shift between genre from a serious drama to outright comedy to a bleak thriller or horror without being a genre bender. There's no one set tone for the story to follow but at the same time, it doesn't feel messy or all over the place within the story. That's exactly what it felt like reading Passage that in a broad stroke is about the efforts of Joanna Lander, a research psychologist, to understand the phenomenon of near-death experiences (or NDEs) by interviewing hospital patients after they are revived following clinical death.
Told in third person, the story is an engaging scenery drawn out vividly by Willis' prose and pieced together by the sci-fi elements of the central premise. Read this for the tender, the horrific and the romantic human moments between the characters, especially in Joanna and Dr. Richard Wright (someone he Joanna met through her work). Don't read this however, if you were hoping for a grand sci-fi mystery with thrills because this is not that kind of sci-fi.
This is one of those books where the journey is where the story shine but the destination, the actual payoff of the mystery was also satisfying enough to bookend the story.
Told in third person, the story is an engaging scenery drawn out vividly by Willis' prose and pieced together by the sci-fi elements of the central premise. Read this for the tender, the horrific and the romantic human moments between the characters, especially in Joanna and Dr. Richard Wright (someone he Joanna met through her work). Don't read this however, if you were hoping for a grand sci-fi mystery with thrills because this is not that kind of sci-fi.
This is one of those books where the journey is where the story shine but the destination, the actual payoff of the mystery was also satisfying enough to bookend the story.
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