A review by circularcubes
Passage by Connie Willis
1.0
I really, really wanted to like this book based on the premise, but, I'm sorry, I just couldn't stand it. I wanted to quit about a fourth of the way in but I stubbornly kept at it. This book could have a third of its content trimmed and it would still feel too long. Willis repeats herself over and over and over and over ad nauseam. I get it, already. The hospital is difficult to get around, the cafeteria is never open, Mr. Mandrake is a self-righteous bully about near-death experiences, that one patient in the study always calls to reschedule, the World War Two vet is overly chatty and repeats the same stories, and both of the protagonists are forever trying to get out of conversations and avoid people. These details are hammered into the reader every ten pages - I'm surprised there was room for a plot, in-between all the endless scenes of characters getting directions and getting lost and talking about the cafeteria being closed. The book is 780 pages - and about 300 of them were the same details being repeated without much furthering the plot.
I also really disliked the characters. The two narrators are incredibly bland (the only distinction I can make between their narrative voices is that Joanna hates leading questions and Richard doesn't notice them) and the secondary characters are almost all one-dimensional tropes.
I had wanted to read some of Willis's other books, but a thorough look at the reviews of those shows me that a lot of them run into the same problems I have with Passage: a lot of trivial details taking up pages and pages of overly-long books, and problems cropping up that could be solved by simply having the characters talk to each other. No thank you. Reading Passage was enough of an ordeal for me.
I also really disliked the characters. The two narrators are incredibly bland (the only distinction I can make between their narrative voices is that Joanna hates leading questions and Richard doesn't notice them) and the secondary characters are almost all one-dimensional tropes.
Spoiler
I also didn't find Joanna believable as a researcher - once she goes through a longer NDE and starts exploring the Titanic, she becomes obsessed with "proving" that she's on the Titanic. I mean, if you're seeing a doomed ship from 1912 when you're supposed to be having a near death experience, does it really matter that there was a specific restaurant on the ship with green chairs and carpeting? Is that really what you're going to focus on, of all things - proving that you've time traveled to the Titanic while you're ostensibly having a near death experience? Why, as a researcher, wouldn't you be more interested in figuring out why your brain is showing you specific images? She spends the first half of the book rolling her eyes every time a subject describes their NDE's as being "real," but that skepticism that is core to her being goes away after two minutes of giving it a go herself? I didn't buy her immediate shift to belief and her consuming need to prove the historical accuracy of her near death experience.I had wanted to read some of Willis's other books, but a thorough look at the reviews of those shows me that a lot of them run into the same problems I have with Passage: a lot of trivial details taking up pages and pages of overly-long books, and problems cropping up that could be solved by simply having the characters talk to each other. No thank you. Reading Passage was enough of an ordeal for me.