Passage (2001 Novel) - Reception

Reception

Gary K. Wolfe, the first of many Locus reviewers to discuss the book at time of publication, compares the novel at many points with Willis's Lincoln's Dreams and writes,

Apart from its simple virtues as a compelling story on an irresistible theme, Connie Willis's big, ambitious new novel Passage should be of particular interest to her readers because of the ways in which it recapitulates major preoccupations and techniques of her career to date, and because in it she seems fiercely determined to show us everything she's got... Each makes historical research a major vector of narrative suspense, with specific historical details—the Civil War in Lincoln's Dreams, the sinking of the Titanic here—treated as though they were clues in a murder mystery.

Wolfe continues, "Like Doomsday Book (1992), it grapples with one of the grandest of all themes, death, and uses the inability of major characters to communicate key bits of information to each other as another suspense device. Like Willis's comic short fiction, it pokes fun at institutional culture—in this case hospitals, with their mazelike architecture and ego-driven politics—and at such ghoulish aspects of pop culture as afterlife gurus like John Edwards" (i.e., John Edward) "and self-help manuals for the recently bereaved."

Faren Miller wrote in Locus, "While the subject matter and setting of Passage allow Willis to display her characteristically unsentimental poignancy ... she can also poke fun at matters of life and death... The book's multiplying internal and external mazes provide an emblem of human complexity, foolishness, and deeper terrors, some reaching from beyond death." Jonathan Strahan of Locus praises the novel's "seriousness", "clear-eyed humor" and its "amusing portrayal of what it's like to be in a big hospital", which is itself a "confusing, overwhelming portrait," as parts of what it makes "her most ambitious novel". He adds, "At the three-quarter point of Passage, Willis does something that no reviewer should leak" - he means Joanna's death and what comes thereafter - "but it is much of what makes the book worth reading. What she attempts is to find a way to look at death and life after death in a way that doesn't conflict with matters of faith, but which also is consistent with the fundamentally rational underpinnings of science fiction."

SciFi.com describes Passage as "an emotionally exhausting trip" that is ultimately "a rewarding experience." Laura Miller, writing for Salon, says that "its construction is a marvel of ingenuity and — what's even more remarkable, given the wizardry of Willis' storytelling — its intellectual honesty is impeccable... You won't find the beautiful sentences of more-celebrated 'novelists of ideas' here, though the ideas themselves are far better, more daring and more original, than those chewed over by most literary heavyweights. The dialogue can sound a trifle canned, the minor characters feel a mite thin (not that many novels of ideas don't share these flaws, too), which explains in part why Passage seems to hover between genre and genius. Given how rare a searching intelligence like Willis' is among today’s novelists, does it really matter?"

The SF Site review judges that the novel "starts slowly, and it's too long. Willis' trademark habit of making some set of frustrating everyday-life details a recurring motif or running joke (in this case, the difficulty of navigating the hospital corridors, plus the never-open cafeteria) is over-extended here..."; conversely, reviewer Steven Wu felt that "Part One of the book is masterful, with several chilling scenes, a compelling mystery, and a doozy of a cliffhanger ending. But then, only a third of the way through the book, things begin slowing down."

The A.V. Club's reviewer writes, "There's certainly nothing comforting about Passage, which steeps its characters in death of all kinds—swift and sudden, prolonged and painful. Willis' satirical flair originally has Landry and Wright running around like The Three Stooges, juggling impossible schedules in an impossible environment and careening amidst exaggeratedly colorful characters in every chapter. A mid-book twist, however, takes the story into darker and more memorable territory, helping turn Passage into a complex, finely crafted, haunting story that makes the light at the end of the tunnel impossible to take lightly."