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laraph's review against another edition
4.0
Too good to be true yet not totally pseudo science thriller. Great characters, sweeping storytelling.
jakiblue's review against another edition
1.0
This came really really close to ending up in my "gave up on" shelf. I tried so hard to like it, I really did. Many times I'd tell myself that was it, I wasn't going to continue, and the ONLY reason I did finish it, is because it was Connie Willis. If this had been the first book I read by her, it would have gone to the local charity shop and I'd never touch another by her. But it wasn't, so I slogged through it...and slogged, and slogged and slogged.
It started out promising - investigating NDE's. But as I got further and further into the book, and the same repetitive stuff kept happening, I was more and more disillusioned. Or rather, bored.
Joanna Lander is a psychologist, based in a large hospital, studying NDE's, talking to people who have "coded" about what they experienced. Her nemesis would be Maurice Mandrake, who has written a best selling book about NDE's, full of the typical Life Reviews, seeing angels, seeing deceased relatives, seeing Jesus and the stairway to heaven (couldn't resist, sorry) etc etc. Joanna doesn't really believe all that, so she ends up teaming up with a scientist who beleives NDE's are purely chemical, only the brain going through teh dying process.
Or something like that - I'm no scientest nor a brain surgeon so a lot of the technical terms were completely lost on me. Mandrake is also based at the hospital, and Joanna routinely finds that he often gets to her interviewees first, and they end up spouting the same ol' story about seeing Uncle Alvin who died during the War and told them it wasn't their time etc.
So, it was so far, so good. I'm thinking cool premise to a book, will be interesting to see Willis' take on NDE's (cos after all,she's writing a book about them so she must believe one thing or another).
It died (heh, another one) for me pretty early on tho. Here's Joanna, a professional working psychologist, who is forever in a hurry, running around like a chook with its head cut off, being late for this and late for that - in fact, she is SOOOOO busy all the time, she keeps forgetting to get lunch and sometimes dinner, and the hospital cafeteria is forever closed or closing (which we are informed of CONSTANTLY) - and I keep thinking "Why the F*** doesn't she pack a lunch from home???????" In a huge hospital where there is only one cafeteria that is notoriously unreliable, and the nearest eating place is about 10 blocks away which has pretty horrible food, and she is just so damn busy doing....well, other than interviewing recently coded patients, I'm not too sure exactly what else she does to earn her wage (which, btw, I kept wondering WHO pays her? The hospital? a grant of some sort??) - why the hell wouldn't you bring in a lunch from home??? Fling a microwave in your office, stock up on those microwaveable meals from the supermarket, or keep the makings for a nice sandwich in a small fridge.....why the hell would you starve every day??
And i could never quite work out exactly WHAT kept her so freakin' busy all the time - and why she would get a gazillion voicemails every day. Cos her only work seemed to be walking aroudn the hospital talking to whichever patient had been declared clinically dead recently. She didn't give lectures on her work, or have any personal patients she regularly saw, or go to conferences, or have meetings with a board of people-who-give-grants if that is how she earnt her money, or have to present her findings to anyone....
And then there's Maurice Mandrake, who Joanna obviously disliked very much, being the publicity-hungry best-selling author who believed in Life after Death that he is. She was forever dodging him - hiding in stairwells, taking different routes through the hospital, avoiding seeing someone she wanted to see if she heard/saw him heading in teh same direction. And then he'd catch her and start a conversation, and NOT ONCE, did Joanna manage to say "right, that's it, I'm busy, can't talk now, see ya later buddy,don't want to talk to you" and just walk away. Like you or I would do, if we were on our way somewhere and got caught by someone we didn't like at all and didn't want to talk to.
Sheesh. She drove me INSANE. Batshit crazy actually.
Right, thinking about it now, I'm changing my two stars (cos i'm nice), to one star. Cos this book drove me nuts. It was waaaay too long by about two-thirds. Seriously. There was crap in there that just didn't need to be there - her old high school teacher forever quoting poets etc whilst in the midst of Alzheimers, who apparently said something casually during a high school english lesson YEARS ago, that Joanna suddenly realized held the KEY to what an NDE was, and why she was on the Titanic when she has her own induced NDE's; the tragic backstory of the teacher's neice Kit who cares for him and becomes Joanna's researcher on the Titanic; the bloody cafeteria that was never open; and oh crap, about 85% of the whole damn story.
Although mind you, I take back the screaming of "JUST GOOGLE IT, YOU STUPID WOMAN" that I kept yelling every time she rang Kit to look up something in teh books about the Titanic, when I realized when the book was written. *blush*
I've read a few books by Connie Willis and enjoyed them all. Not this one. It took me 5 days to finish, and I can normally knock out a book this size in less than 2. And when I DID finish, it was a with a HUGE sense of relief and then glee as I watched the damn brick sail through the room and hit my bedroom wall.
It started out promising - investigating NDE's. But as I got further and further into the book, and the same repetitive stuff kept happening, I was more and more disillusioned. Or rather, bored.
Joanna Lander is a psychologist, based in a large hospital, studying NDE's, talking to people who have "coded" about what they experienced. Her nemesis would be Maurice Mandrake, who has written a best selling book about NDE's, full of the typical Life Reviews, seeing angels, seeing deceased relatives, seeing Jesus and the stairway to heaven (couldn't resist, sorry) etc etc. Joanna doesn't really believe all that, so she ends up teaming up with a scientist who beleives NDE's are purely chemical, only the brain going through teh dying process.
Or something like that - I'm no scientest nor a brain surgeon so a lot of the technical terms were completely lost on me. Mandrake is also based at the hospital, and Joanna routinely finds that he often gets to her interviewees first, and they end up spouting the same ol' story about seeing Uncle Alvin who died during the War and told them it wasn't their time etc.
So, it was so far, so good. I'm thinking cool premise to a book, will be interesting to see Willis' take on NDE's (cos after all,she's writing a book about them so she must believe one thing or another).
It died (heh, another one) for me pretty early on tho. Here's Joanna, a professional working psychologist, who is forever in a hurry, running around like a chook with its head cut off, being late for this and late for that - in fact, she is SOOOOO busy all the time, she keeps forgetting to get lunch and sometimes dinner, and the hospital cafeteria is forever closed or closing (which we are informed of CONSTANTLY) - and I keep thinking "Why the F*** doesn't she pack a lunch from home???????" In a huge hospital where there is only one cafeteria that is notoriously unreliable, and the nearest eating place is about 10 blocks away which has pretty horrible food, and she is just so damn busy doing....well, other than interviewing recently coded patients, I'm not too sure exactly what else she does to earn her wage (which, btw, I kept wondering WHO pays her? The hospital? a grant of some sort??) - why the hell wouldn't you bring in a lunch from home??? Fling a microwave in your office, stock up on those microwaveable meals from the supermarket, or keep the makings for a nice sandwich in a small fridge.....why the hell would you starve every day??
And i could never quite work out exactly WHAT kept her so freakin' busy all the time - and why she would get a gazillion voicemails every day. Cos her only work seemed to be walking aroudn the hospital talking to whichever patient had been declared clinically dead recently. She didn't give lectures on her work, or have any personal patients she regularly saw, or go to conferences, or have meetings with a board of people-who-give-grants if that is how she earnt her money, or have to present her findings to anyone....
And then there's Maurice Mandrake, who Joanna obviously disliked very much, being the publicity-hungry best-selling author who believed in Life after Death that he is. She was forever dodging him - hiding in stairwells, taking different routes through the hospital, avoiding seeing someone she wanted to see if she heard/saw him heading in teh same direction. And then he'd catch her and start a conversation, and NOT ONCE, did Joanna manage to say "right, that's it, I'm busy, can't talk now, see ya later buddy,don't want to talk to you" and just walk away. Like you or I would do, if we were on our way somewhere and got caught by someone we didn't like at all and didn't want to talk to.
Sheesh. She drove me INSANE. Batshit crazy actually.
Right, thinking about it now, I'm changing my two stars (cos i'm nice), to one star. Cos this book drove me nuts. It was waaaay too long by about two-thirds. Seriously. There was crap in there that just didn't need to be there - her old high school teacher forever quoting poets etc whilst in the midst of Alzheimers, who apparently said something casually during a high school english lesson YEARS ago, that Joanna suddenly realized held the KEY to what an NDE was, and why she was on the Titanic when she has her own induced NDE's; the tragic backstory of the teacher's neice Kit who cares for him and becomes Joanna's researcher on the Titanic; the bloody cafeteria that was never open; and oh crap, about 85% of the whole damn story.
Although mind you, I take back the screaming of "JUST GOOGLE IT, YOU STUPID WOMAN" that I kept yelling every time she rang Kit to look up something in teh books about the Titanic, when I realized when the book was written. *blush*
I've read a few books by Connie Willis and enjoyed them all. Not this one. It took me 5 days to finish, and I can normally knock out a book this size in less than 2. And when I DID finish, it was a with a HUGE sense of relief and then glee as I watched the damn brick sail through the room and hit my bedroom wall.
glenncolerussell's review against another edition
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
kilgoreytrout's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
I'm about to reread this book after a few years to try and figure out what I love about it so much. I know why I enjoyed the book, but can't place why I loved it.
I was sure that I'd claim it was too long, and while I could probably find some sections that I'd cut, I enjoyed going back and forth with the MC over what I thought was happening. I especially loved how wrong I was.
Then, about 50-70% in (I think it has been a while), the author does something that I never expected, and that just doesn't usually happen, and I loved that too. This was my first book by Willis, and when I finished, I instantly looked up the rest.
I was sure that I'd claim it was too long, and while I could probably find some sections that I'd cut, I enjoyed going back and forth with the MC over what I thought was happening. I especially loved how wrong I was.
Then, about 50-70% in (I think it has been a while), the author does something that I never expected, and that just doesn't usually happen, and I loved that too. This was my first book by Willis, and when I finished, I instantly looked up the rest.
sleepytimebooks's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
4.75
arm88125's review against another edition
1.0
DNF. I spent two weeks spinning my wheels on this book and read only 30% of it. Very interesting premise, but very poorly executed. This author did no medical research to write this novel. I am a hospital pharmacist, so maybe that’s part of what I couldn’t get past. But also, this book should have been half its length, if the first 30% I read was any indication. Lots of worthless dialogue about where things were in the hospital, how hard they are to get to, how the cafeteria is always closed, a potential romance I didn’t care about, a character who was to be a test subject but always had a new excuse for why she couldn’t come in for testing 12 different times, etc, etc, etc. Gave up after it never got any more interesting.
amyinvegas's review against another edition
2.0
Not her best, but still a page-turner. I was bothered at her anger towards religion, and at her ignorance of my own.
genteelblackhole's review against another edition
4.0
Connie Willis writes long novels. Some of them, like Doomsday Book and / All Clear, manage to keep me gripped and intrigued throughout. Others, like To Say Nothing of the Dog, have strong beginnings and ends but a baggy middle. (To be fair, if you're not a fan of her style, even the ones I found gripping will probably still annoy you.)
Passage falls into the latter camp. It establishes an intriguing story, pays it off well, but meanders somewhat in the middle. Joanna's desperate search becomes repetitive. How many times do I need to read about her trying to avoid Mr Mandrake, or trying to navigate the labyrinthine corridors of the hospital? Overall I still enjoyed the book enough to give it four stars, and I found the way it handled grief quite relatable. But I think some of the near-death experiences and mad dashes around hospital corridors could've been condensed.
Passage falls into the latter camp. It establishes an intriguing story, pays it off well, but meanders somewhat in the middle. Joanna's desperate search becomes repetitive. How many times do I need to read about her trying to avoid Mr Mandrake, or trying to navigate the labyrinthine corridors of the hospital? Overall I still enjoyed the book enough to give it four stars, and I found the way it handled grief quite relatable. But I think some of the near-death experiences and mad dashes around hospital corridors could've been condensed.
pc2207's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0