By: Connie Willis Publisher: Bantam Average Rating: Binding: Mass Market Paperback Label: Bantam Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 800 Publication Date: January 02, 2002 Release Date: January 02, 2002
Product Description: 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 — ashattering scenario that will keep you feverishly reading until the final climactic page.
Amazon.com Review: Most of us would rather not spend a lot of time contemplating death, but the characters in Connie Willis's novel Passage make a living at it. Joanna Lander is a medical researcher specializing in Near Death Experiences (NDEs) and how the brain constructs them. Her partner in this endeavor is Richard Wright, a single-minded scientist who induces NDEs in healthy people by injecting a compound that tricks the brain into thinking it's dying. Joanna and Richard team up and try to find test subjects whose ability to report their experiences objectively hasn't been wrecked by reading the books of pop-psychologist and hospital gadabout Maurice Mandrake. Mandrake has gained fame and fortune by convincing people that they can expect light, warmth, and welcoming loved ones once they die. Joanna and Richard try to quantify NDEs in more scientific terms, a frustrating exercise to say the least.
The brain cells started to die within moments of death. By the end of four to six minutes the damage was irreversible, and people brought back from death after that didn't talk about tunnels and life reviews. They didn't talk at all.... But if the dying were facing annihilation, why didn't they say, "It's over!" or, "I'm shutting down"?... Why did they say, "It's beautiful over there," and, "I'm coming, Mother!"
When Joanna decides to become a test subject and see an NDE firsthand, she discovers that death is both more and less than she expected. Telling anything at all about her experience would be spoiling the book's suspenseful buildup, but readers are in for some shocks as Willis reveals the secrets and mysteries of the afterlife. Unfortunately, several running gags--the maze-like complexity of the hospital, Mandrake's oily sales pitch, and a tiresomely talkative World War II veteran--go on a little too long and threaten the pace of the story near the middle. But don't stop reading! We expect a lot from Connie Willis because she's so good, and Passage's payoff is incredible--the ending will leave you breathless, and more than a little haunted. Passage masterfully blends tragedy, humor, and fear in an unforgettable meditation on humanity and death. --Therese Littleton
Hilariously accurate The world Willis has created in this novel is as convincing and hilarious as those in other Willis masterpieces like To Say Nothing of the Dog and Bellwether. This world accurately reflects the current state of our "civilization", in which we're swamped by information all the time, 1% of which is actually useful, and we must sift the wheat from the chaff at lightning speed. Evading multiple instant communication devices is necessary to get anything done at all.
The setting is Mercy General Hospital, a single building created from three by a disgruntled or underpaid architect, in which you need a three-dimensional map to get anywhere. To get anywhere quickly, you need the map, considerable ingenuity, and luck.
Into this entirely realistic contemporary institution are introduced two worthy people trying to get something done, which is to find out what Near Death Experiences are and what they're for. Dr. Richard Wright and Dr. Joanna Lander combine the sciences of neurology and psychology, respectively, to map what happens in the human brain during an NDE. Joanna becomes a test subject for artificially induced NDEs, and finds herself aboard the R.M.S. Titanic in her final hours afloat. The reader incidentally finds out a great deal about that disaster, as well as the Hindenburg, the Hartford circus fire, and the U.S.S. Yorktown. Much of this information comes from Maisie Nellis, a little girl dying of viral heart disease who is also a first rate detective with a will of steel. Maisie doesn't have a minute to waste, and she doesn't.
All the main characters in the novel are fighting formidable foes: premature death, the chaos of a big city E.R., the slow death of a loved one by Alzheimer's disease, the forces of greed and delusion, and the extreme fragility of human communication. All of them fight tenaciously, and they all win, but not without sustaining heavy losses.
It's my personal conviction that great acts of heroism are being performed all around us all the time by people we would not notice if we passed them in the street. Because of that conviction, I didn't find the book too long, but rather just long enough to resolve the major themes and complete an extremely ambitious tapestry. A theory of the nature of NDEs is certainly proposed, but the capacity of the human heart for performing great deeds under extreme pressure--that's proven.
Pity about the lackluster ending It's an interesting story, filled with tons of medical jargon (which may or may not be correct, I skimmed over it, taking it as fiction and at face value), and in its own way a bit of a mystery - one of those books that drags you along as you pick up one puzzle piece after another. I didn't want to put it down. The ending... ah, it was a let-down, honestly, but the rest of the book was worth the ride.
The Titanic as a Metaphor for Bodily Death Joanna is a scientist studying "near-death" experiences but she becomes frustrated with interviewing patients who have coded. She forms an alliance with Dr. Richard Wright a neurologist who has found a drug that manufactures the effect of dying. Joanna decides to try it herself in a series of experiments...
This novel confronts the physical, emotional and mythical contexts of death head on. The plot spirals through a series of loops, each one taking us a little deeper into the mystery but not crossing the barrier until the shattering conclusion hits with the force of revelation: death is a spiritual voyage and once truly launched there is no turning back.
This is one of the most original works of science fiction of our time. Some of the scenes have a fine satiric touch. The sinking of the Titanic becomes a recurring image, one that Joanna thinks holds the key to her research. Make no mistake about this book: it is a scary story. Here, away from all the demented serial killers of the world, lies true horror, true beauty and true life: in the midst of life, we are in Death.
Wonderful! This is a wonderful read but, you must be just that: a reader! The subject matter has obviously been well-researched, the characters are believable, and the ending was delicious! Don't approach this book with a microwave frame of mind ... it's best cooked the old-fashioned way, low simmer!
Disappointing Willis has an absolutely fascinating take on death, but she can't do justice to her own idea. One problem, sadly, is her lackluster writing which is uninspiring, to say the least. The style is clunky, with little poetry to it, and does not work well with a novel dealing with life, death, mortality, immortality and self sacrifice.
Willis' inability to recreate human passion in dialogue form is a bigger problem. Twice in the novel, characters attempt to undo death in order to save someone they love. However, since Willis is unable to make these relationships in any way compelling, in neither case is the attempt terribly moving.
In The Passage, boy and girl meet and have the same conversation over and over again. Friends get together repeatedly, and say the same things, repeatedly. Relationships don't develop; characters don't emote. Friends don't fight with conviction. Lovers don't fall in love with conviction. Adults don't show attachment to children with conviction. The author writes as if intense emotion was unseemly, an embarrassement that should be frowned upon. In a novel dealing with death and life, not a single character has an outburst of emotion.
And then there's the editing. I love long novels, but this novel is long because it is repetitive. Halving it would have done wonders for it.
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