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Title: Passage by Connie Willis ISBN: 0-553-58051-5 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 02 January, 2002 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $7.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.72 (165 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Pretty bad.
Comment: At first I couldn't believe this book was by the woman who wrote Doomsday Book (which I loved). But after reading reviews for both books on Amazon I had top admit that Doomsday had some of the same flaws (most notably incredibly stupid, ineffective one-dimensional characters), to a much lessor degree. I also found the book to be incredibly boring. The pace of information-gathering is soooo slow that I started to forget what had already been revealed. It started to seem like I was reading a description of the same incident over and over. The eceptionally crude, black and white characterizations became increasingly difficult to stomach as the book wore on. OK, you don't like Dr. Mandrake. Can we forget about him now Joanna and stop acting like a third-grader running from a cooties victim? Unlike everyone else in the book Maisie, the sick girl, is amusing so it's hard to understand why the protagonists who are supposedly rooting for her expend so much energy avoiding her. Ultimately I felt the "answer" revealed toward the end was somewhat poignant, esp. in light of 9/11. I actually figured that that was where she had gotten the idea and checked the publication date. There was obviously a great deal of thought and care that went into the book, but nothing could redeem this book from the boring pace and unappealing characters. But Wills does deserve credit for coming up with an interesting idea. I just wish she would have presented it better.
Rating: 4
Summary: Finally, a satisfying theory about NDEs
Comment: The other reviewers have satisfactorily covered the plot of this book, so I'll skip it. What happens after death is the mystery of the ages, and the near death experience (NDE) has been used as "proof" that there is life after death. Willis's hypothesis concerning NDEs makes the most sense of any I've ever heard. Of course, it makes some people uncomfortable, because it's not easy to believe that death is the end of the road, and we'd like to cling to any shred of "evidence" of life after death. But humans are not the only self-aware animals on earth who have feelings and memories, but somehow we have not heard of mainstream, basically normal people exclaiming that they have seen the ghost of an elephant. Whenever anyone talks of having had an NDE, they really never do supply any information that they couldn't have learned from another source, and they always claim to have seen loved ones -- a beloved grandmother, a dead spouse, a cherished uncle -- at the end of the tunnel. No one ever wakes up and says, "No, I saw my mother-in-law at the end of that tunnel. I hate my mother-in-law. When I contemplated spending eternity with her my soul ran screaming back into my body." I can't reveal Willis's theory without spoiling the plot, but suffice it to say that one clue is the physical movements of the characters in physical space -- the way they change location, moving through the maze of the hospital, with its different functions, in order to accomplish some goal. In this book, as in life, what happens to the body happens to the mind. Even the way that this psychologist maddeningly avoids a total, bombastic moron who is messing up her research illustrates Willis's theory.
Although it serves a literary purpose, that running, well, running, of the main character from the man who is making her professional life a nightmare is the only quarrel I have with this book -- that a psychologist would avoid confrontation by running and hiding. There are less maladaptive ways to avoid confrontation, if that is the goal, than allowing someone you hate to force you to hide in corners and interfere with your day. The only explanation I could see for this motif in the book is that the bad guy has the support of the hospital, and she may be concerned that if she upsets him he would retaliate by going to the board of trustees of the hospital and having her removed, somehow. If this is true, Willis should have explicitly stated this instead of leaving the reader fuming, once again, at the infuriating, bizarre cowardice of the main character. I will say that, in my profession, I have interviewed thousands of people in matters of varying degrees of urgency, and she captures the differing levels of witness helpfulness (or not) brilliantly.
A great read.
Rating: 5
Summary: Loved this book!
Comment: This is truly an extraordinary book--the kind that makes you stay up late to finish because you absolutely can't set it down.
I got truly lost in this book--it is a fascinating, disturbing and mind stretching novel. The characters are very well drawn--witty, human, touching. I loved this book.
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Title: Remake by Connie Willis ISBN: 0553574418 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 January, 1996 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: Doomsday Book by Connie Willis ISBN: 0553562738 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 August, 1993 List Price(USD): $7.50 |
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Title: Bellwether by Connie Willis ISBN: 0553562967 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 02 June, 1997 List Price(USD): $7.50 |
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Title: To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis, Connie Willis ISBN: 0553575384 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 December, 1998 List Price(USD): $7.50 |
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Title: Lincoln's Dreams by Connie Willis ISBN: 0553270257 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 June, 1992 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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