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Well it’s only the one book, but it was a good 'un AND a doorstop, so that’s alright.
Passage by Connie Willis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I generally like Connie Willis’ work – not many people can blend science-fiction, satire, history and screwball comedy into one story and get away with it for over 500 pages. Here, she throws all four into a blender to explore what happens when we die – or almost die. Dr Joanna Lander is a psychologist at Mercy General Hospital researching near-death experiences (NDEs) to determine their biological function (if any). She is recruited by neurologist Dr Richard Wright, who has discovered a way to chemically induce an artificial NDE in volunteers, and needs her interviewing expertise to get an accurate description of their experience during the NDE.
During all this, Lander must contend with numerous obstacles, from rival Maurice Mandrake (who uses pseudoscience to “prove” that NDEs are visits to Heaven, complete with white light, angels, life reviews and messages from deceased relatives) to Mercy General itself, an insanely complex maze that’s all too easy to get lost in, and where the cafeteria is rarely open when you need it. In between are all manner of characters, from man-obsessed nurses Vielle and Tish to nine-year-old disaster-obsessed heart patient Maise and talkative WW2 vet Ed Wojakowski. Inevitably, Joanna undergoes an artificial NDE herself and sees something she does not expect. And it is of course impossible.
Telling you would give the game away, though I’ll say this is where Willis’ history-nerd expertise kicks into high gear. In fact she’s firing on all cylinders here, mostly avoiding the obvious plot twists (apart from the ending, maybe) and keeping the pages turning by having Joanna bounce from one obstacle to the next and hitting one dead end after another as she becomes increasingly obsessed with finding out what she’s really seeing. At close to 800 pages, it’s probably longer than it ought to be, and some parts are clearly there for Willis to get certain things off her chest, especially regarding quacks like Mandrake and the awful ways well-meaning people try to comfort the grieving. Also, the nurses-chasing-husband-material angle is a bit annoying, though Willis may have been satirizing prime-time hospital dramas there. Some people have complained about the last chapter, but I didn’t have a problem with it. Anyway, I lost a lot of sleep over this novel because of the “and then what happened” effect – and it was worth it.
View all my reviews
Into the white,
This is dF
Passage by Connie WillisMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I generally like Connie Willis’ work – not many people can blend science-fiction, satire, history and screwball comedy into one story and get away with it for over 500 pages. Here, she throws all four into a blender to explore what happens when we die – or almost die. Dr Joanna Lander is a psychologist at Mercy General Hospital researching near-death experiences (NDEs) to determine their biological function (if any). She is recruited by neurologist Dr Richard Wright, who has discovered a way to chemically induce an artificial NDE in volunteers, and needs her interviewing expertise to get an accurate description of their experience during the NDE.
During all this, Lander must contend with numerous obstacles, from rival Maurice Mandrake (who uses pseudoscience to “prove” that NDEs are visits to Heaven, complete with white light, angels, life reviews and messages from deceased relatives) to Mercy General itself, an insanely complex maze that’s all too easy to get lost in, and where the cafeteria is rarely open when you need it. In between are all manner of characters, from man-obsessed nurses Vielle and Tish to nine-year-old disaster-obsessed heart patient Maise and talkative WW2 vet Ed Wojakowski. Inevitably, Joanna undergoes an artificial NDE herself and sees something she does not expect. And it is of course impossible.
Telling you would give the game away, though I’ll say this is where Willis’ history-nerd expertise kicks into high gear. In fact she’s firing on all cylinders here, mostly avoiding the obvious plot twists (apart from the ending, maybe) and keeping the pages turning by having Joanna bounce from one obstacle to the next and hitting one dead end after another as she becomes increasingly obsessed with finding out what she’s really seeing. At close to 800 pages, it’s probably longer than it ought to be, and some parts are clearly there for Willis to get certain things off her chest, especially regarding quacks like Mandrake and the awful ways well-meaning people try to comfort the grieving. Also, the nurses-chasing-husband-material angle is a bit annoying, though Willis may have been satirizing prime-time hospital dramas there. Some people have complained about the last chapter, but I didn’t have a problem with it. Anyway, I lost a lot of sleep over this novel because of the “and then what happened” effect – and it was worth it.
View all my reviews
Into the white,
This is dF
