The Tesseract

Rating:
Summary: EASY to put down, NOT spellingbinding like The Beach
Review: I loved The Beach, Alex Garland's first book. The movie was ok ,however it is the writer's voice in this book that is so unique. In The Tesseract, the writers voice is totally different,and I did not find it unique or compelling as it is in The Beach. I bought the hardback of The Tesseract because I could not wait for another book by this author and was totally disappointed. I do not like short stories and this reminded me of stories not a book. I have read books I like that were written in parts with different points of view and different stories that intertwine but this book I did not enjoy at all! If you haven't read The Beach it is a must read even if you saw the movie. The plot is enjoyable but it is the writing that makes this book special. If you have read The Beach The Tesseract is totally different in tone and writers voice.Do not read The Tesseract just because you liked his previous book.

Rating:
Summary: This book was a disappointment
Review: I liked the movie "The Beach," but reading "The Tesseract" made me not want to finish the book ("The Beach"). I agree with a lot of the reviewers who did not like "The Tesseract". I thought this book was unfocused, discursive and not very compelling.

The only reason why I persisted with this book was because I am Filipino-American and you don't get very much about us in art nowadays. His description of the climate and Tagalog social intercourse are insightful. But author's atheism and the nauseating violence annoy the most patient reader. Persistence does not pay for this one.

Rating:
Summary: I don't read many books but this was quite enjoyable
Review: I've been obsessed with the movie The Beach. Every time I watch it, it climbs my favorite movie ladder(which it is now in the top 10). So I decided to (gasp) read the book The Beach to see what all was different from the movie. Sadly my library only had The Tesseract by Alex Garland, so no Beach for me. While I don't read many books, The Tesseract held my attention and was a fun read.

The book is simply brilliant, as others have said. This is what I got out of the book: It tackles the issue of time or the 4th dimension something that we as 3 dimensional beings can never really see happening nor control. Whether it be someone who has gotten themself into a bad situation, someone who has loved, or someone who has forgotten the past, time is what none of these people could predict. Much like they could not predict how they would end up spending time together themselves.

What we end up with is a group of 3-dimensional people who are haunted by time. And by doing so only look at the next step up, the 4th dimension, but never understanding it as a whole. And with this comes a sense of godlessness that if humans are struggling to comprehend what's behind time, how could they ever comprehend god or some higher dimension in life or the hereafter?

The end result is a group of people who at most can only comprehend their view of actions that take place, who never have the full story, who can only make their daily lives less complex but never more. A book through 3 different stories that shows the limits of humanity. Everyone should read The Tesseract.

Rating:
Summary: Gritty Thriller
Review: The Tesseract is the second novel from Alex Garland, author of the popular The Beach, which was also made into a movie starring Leonardo diCaprio. Set in the Phillipines it is split into three basic parts with a few subplots thrown in for good measure. The first story has Sean waiting for gangster Don Pepe in a small cramped hotel room, not knowing what will become of him. This first part is particularly well evoked, with Sean panicking and trying to guess how his predecessor died. This has the most similar narrative style of Garland's previous book, as it is both fast-paced and deceptively descriptive, managing to convey perfectly what's going on in very few words.

The second part involves a long series of flashbacks of a middle-class Phillipino woman named Rosa as she pieces together her past. This is much more gently written, with a constant contrast between who Rosa is and who she used to be. Garland ensures that when the climax of the story does come that it's not only shocking but makes the reader reevaluate what has gone on before.

The final story is about two street kids, how they came to live on the streets and their relationship with one another. This is definitely the most gritty part of the novel and Garland ensures us that this is not the backpacker's paradise that The Beach was but an urban hell. Thankfully though Garland refrains from dipping into sentimentality, preferring to unflinchingly describe the inner turmoil of his characters than exploit their depressions.

The Tesseract is one of those books that will definitely keep you hooked but unfortunately it does suffer when compared to The Beach, which was just that little bit more exciting. Also unfortunate is the book's very format which virtually forces its reader to pick a favourite story and character. Still, that doesn't take away from the fact that compared to most modern novels this is excellent and is well worth picking up.

Rating:
Summary: Pretentious, boring and adolescent
Review: Alex Garland's first book, 'The Beach', somehow transcended its plot holes and difficult opening pages to become one of the most compelling and effective novels ever written, and it was always going to be a tough act to follow. Still, the first 50 pages of 'The Tesseract' are promising enough: Garland moves confidently in a promising new direction, serving up a tense atmospheric Tarantino-esque meeting between Sean and Don Pepe -- a meeting that explodes in sudden violence and segues into a life-and-death footchase through nighttime Manilla. Then -- perhaps at the promptings of some misplaced high-art, novelistic impulse? -- the action abruptly stops mid-chase, and for 150-odd pages Garland indulges in a digressive flashback centered around a new character, Rosa.

Digression and flashback can be used to good effect (again, cf Tarantino), but here they're deployed gratuitously, as Garland drags us back and forth across the surface of Rosa's dull and (despite the exotic trappings) entirely conventional world. And where, incidentally, is the one scene -- Rosa's break up with Lito -- that might actually have been interesting? Like other potentially powerful scenes, it seems to have been almost studiously avoided. Perhaps these omissions are meant to reflect the haphazard workings of life? Or to illustrate how the 'big' things dont really matter? Whatever. The received impression is simply that the author was too lazy to deal properly with his material.

Finally, after at last getting back to the chase for a couple of paragraphs -- although all the tension and interest in Sean and his pursuers has by now completely evaporated -- we're off on another digression, admittedly with marginally more interesting characters this time (Vincente and Totoy, the Manilla street kids) but so larded with embarrassingly adolescent conceipts that it becomes a real struggle to make it through to the end of the book.

What a mess -- and what a shame!

What Garland has written here is a short story -- and a pretty good one too! -- padded out to novel length with 250 pages of boring, pretentious filler. Do yourself a favor, and do what Garland's editor should have done: tear out those 250 pages, toss them away, and then sit down and enjoy the remaining 70 pages of effective, atmospheric writing.

Rating:
Summary: 4 dimensional - incredible
Review: This book will inspire the unthinking to think and the unfeeling to feel. An amazingly deep story - tied together in ways you cant even imagine in 3-d.

Rating:
Summary: This book was a disappointment
Review: I liked the movie "The Beach," but reading "The Tesseract" made me not want to finish the book ("The Beach"). I agree with a lot of the reviewers who did not like "The Tesseract". I thought this book was unfocused, discursive and not very compelling.

The only reason why I persisted with this book was because I am Filipino-American and you don't get very much about us in art nowadays. His description of the climate and Tagalog social intercourse are insightful. But author's atheism and the nauseating violence annoy the most patient reader. Persistence does not pay for this one.

Rating:
Summary: A Terse Act
Review: "The Tesseract" provides a beautiful description of a series of ugly circumstances. Here we have life and death; disfigurement; cruelty; jealousy and sadness; coincidence and bad luck. We also have love and loyalty and beauty. Pretty much the whole gamut of human experience.

For anyone who's read Donna Tartt, I have to say that "The Tesseract" is to "The Beach" as Tartt's "The Little Friend" is to "The Secret History". In each case, we have a compelling and exciting first novel (complete with totally obsessed fans), followed by a more mature and exquisitly crafted novel that inevitably draws howls of complaint from said fans, who seem to feel betrayed because the second offering isn't a clone of the first.

Authors like Garland and Tartt remind me of the stunning power of language, and that imagination is alive and well in the world. I for one am grateful that they were both brave enough to disappoint many of their fans by trying something different.

"The Tesseract" strikes me as being fairly short on adjectives. Garland _shows_ us interactions between his characters, and leaves his readers to interpret their meanings.

I found this novel beautiful and haunting. And if Garland's tender depiction of a pair of roguish street kids doesn't move you ... well then, maybe you need to stick with "The Beach"!

Rating:
Summary: professional writing
Review: a very clean piece of writing. The Tesseract is really three (long) short stories connected by location and certain events which characters from each of the stories participate in. in accordance with Martin Amis's prediction that good fiction will embrace science, the speed of light makes an appearance in the last story, as does the tesseract, at which point it becomes clear that Garland's interest in science has a faintly mystical edge to it. i had the sense that the tesseract was intended to explain, at a deeper level, how the stories were connected, but was unsure how it did so. thus, if the three stories, when read together, were supposed to reveal a fourth story, or a supervenient meaning, that story/meaning didn't seem clear to me. Garland is a sensitive portrayer of character and an unobtrusive presence in his work. as far as his prose style is concerned, he packs a fair punch without giving the impression of overexerting himself. overall, this was an absorbing, well-crafted novel, and though i didn't feel the author wrote with sufficient intensity to make the book really demand to be read, it was still a great pleasure to read.

Rating:
Summary: A tesseract is an object you cannot fathom, at first
Review: A tesseract, as Garland explains, is a four dimensional object. We live in a three-dimensional world and therefore cannot comprehend a tesseract. A tesseract cannot be understood until it is unraveled into a three-dimensional object.

This story is like a tesseract. If one were to read the final act first, there would be no understanding of how these very diverse characters could end up at such a violent climax. So Garland uses changes in time and location to tell the story from the beginning. He does this in a way that intrigues the reader.

The diverse characters are an agitated Englishman, a malicious Phillipino crime lord, his three thugs, a mother of two young children, and two teenage street kids.

Garland's use of language is impressive. He seems to meticulously choose each word to suggest the seedy side of the city of Manila: Dirty, Humid, Dust, Stains, Heat. He also draws a distinction between the chaotic and menacing city and the slightly more tranquil suburb. However, even in the suburbs a neighbor may come to the door with a shotgun in hand.

Like in an ancient tragedy, fate mercilessly drags these characters together for a violent climax. The concept of fate lurks just under the surface of this novel leaving the characters with little autonomy and propelling them like trains on a track to a final cataclysm.

Thinking back on this book, my pleasure in it is still somewhat a mystery. I think the answer is this: taken separately, I would have had little interest in these characters. However, Garland weaves their lives into an intricate yet compact passion play that gripped me and compelled me to finish and ultimately enjoy the book. Together, they make up the tesseract, which is not fully understood until unraveled.