The Tesseract

Rating:
Summary: My favourite book of the year so far
Review: If The Beach was your favourite book of recent years you have to read the Tesseract! A wonderful book with an intriguing story-line, kind of Short Cuts meets Brit cool! Read it please, if inly to find out what the title is!

Rating:
Summary: A modern classic.
Review: An exciting read. The Tesseract had more likable, interesting characters than any novel I have recently read. The tale, despite a complex structure, was in the end relatively simple using the most basic human themes. Surpisingly (given the write-up on the Jacket) I found the story and the plights of its characters touching. The author demonstrated a remarkable sensitivity creating and getting into the minds of a diverse spectrum of people. At the same time the story unfolds at a blistering pace with constant changes of perspective. It was really interesting, the kind of story one thinks about for weeks after reading. Garland has been added to the list of authors whose books I'll rush out to buy in hardback the first day they are printed.

Rating:
Summary: Unravelling the Tesseract - 2nd Novel Does Not Dissapoint
Review: On a first reading, you could be forgiven for thinking that the Tesseract was written by a different author than the Beach.

Yes, it is less linerar story driven than the Beach, but this not at the expense of plot, which is gripping. A number of different characters' experiences over one night in Manila are told, the stands of the story gradually coming together to an explosive climax.

The Tesseract is a more "mature" (oh how patronising, sorry Alex) novel than the Beach, and as such may not be appreciated by some of all of those who bought into the 20something fantasy of the Beach. However, if you have the stomach for an altogether deeper read (without sacraficing tension and page-turning excitment), I cannot recommend the Tesseract more highly.

Rating:
Summary: Life's no Beach in Manila
Review: What a disappointment! Less plot than the average allotment and a worrying slide towards the vogue of pretention over story.

The idea is interesting and Garland writes well enough to almost get away with that alone; but not quite well enough.

Read The Beach, which is a joy, and leave this on the shelf unless you're a committed Garland fan.

Rating:
Summary: An Altogether More Intelligent Book Than The Beach!
Review: He's done it - and confounded his critics! The Boy can write after all - buy this book. Sell everything you have to buy this book! Ring up your friends and tell them to buy this book - you won't regret it! You have to buy this book! Alex Garland has proved his critics wrong - he really can WRITE! This is a much more ambitious book than his last one, and he's done it so well! ENJOY!

Rating:
Summary: Intelligent, detailed, absorbing
Review: This book a page-turner just as "The Beach" was, but I loved this book more. "The Beach" was thrilling and filled with adrenaline, but when Garland turns his attention to character development in more "normal" settings (although not without violence) he surprises you with even more profound thoughts about human life, destiny, chance, truth & reality. "The Tesseract" seems a more mature book, and the details of Manila and its surrounding areas are so real, you feel like you yourself are running down the grimy streets of the slums, trying to salvage your life. Garland proves himself a master of character portrayal by having vastly different people inhabit the same book & even interact with each other. From destitute street kids to a well-to-do doctor to a European fleeing gangsters, Garland shows that no matter what level of society, all humans have thoughts, fears, concerns, dreams. These poignant glimpses of human emotion make this book impossible to put down. Can't wait for his next book!

Rating:
Summary: Liked 28 Days Later? You'll like this too.
Review: Alien landscapes that seem all too familiar, person devastation, and random violent acts. Those are the stock-in-trade ingredients of Alex Garland in this novel and in his accomplished screenplay for 28 Days Later. His characters roam through these stark scenes, just able to survive amid the most inhuman acts of destruction. Whether it's science fiction or the grimy back streets of poverty stricken cities, the pull of his stories is magnetic and inevitable. Garland hanles his innocents of the world and his hardened villains with equal aplomb. The reader is taken, the viewer is fascinated, and all in a deft, sophisticated style. Garland is grim, but beneath the gritty survival story lies a potent and hopeful humanity. Better that The Beach, a complex and intertwined story awaits you in The Tesseract.

Rating:
Summary: Two stars is a bit generous, but...
Review: I really wanted to like The Tesseract, and I couldn't have been more excited when it was released. The Beach is one of my favorite fiction novels (if not my absolute favorite), so I fought through The Tesseract, waiting and hoping it would get interesting, but I made it to the last page and just thought, "what a waist of my time this read was." Again, I really did want to like it, and I understand what Mr. Garland was trying to accomplish with the whole "Tesseract" thing, but a decent storyline was lost in the process. Basically, I felt it didn't flow well, the characters as well as the stories were not interesting enough, and the ending was not worth the journey. Unfortunately, though Mr. Garland has written one of my favorite novels, he has also written one of my least favorite novels. I gave The Tesseract 2 stars because I have faith in Alex Garland as a writer and still look forward to reading his other works.

Rating:
Summary: Starts well, ends not so good
Review: After "The beach" the eyes of the world turned to Alex Garland, waiting to see what he was going to write next. It was "The tesseract". A story divided into three segments, seemingly unrelated, but that are obviously sewn together in the end.

The first part is about Sean, a seaman involved with Don Pepe, the mafia boss controling naval traffic through the ports of Manilla. Sean is lying in bed in a deserted, decaying hotel, sweating as he waits for Don Pepe to show up and maybe kill him. This part is very graphic and violent. The second part - the best one in my opinion- is about Rose, a young woman that left her poor village in the Phillipines to become a successful doctor in Manilla. Rose remembers how she found her first love with Lito, a crippled and humble fisherman. The third part, back in Manilla, has Vincente and Totoy, two street kids, as main characters. This part is somewhat boring, slow, and almost ruins the entire book. If the first part has an interesting setting and plot, and the second part has great characters, the third part has nothing much interesting.

But what is the tesseract? The tesseract is a hypercube, something that we cannot see because it's in forth dimension. We can only see an aproximate form, like a 3-d cruciform. That's an analogy to the three stories in the book. We know they relate to each other, they come one on topof the other, we just can't see how. The problem is, when Garland tells us, it is not satisfactory. The final moments of the book could have been more developed.

All in all, "The tesseract" is not in the same league as "The beach". But it is two-thirds of a good reading.

Grade 7.2/10


Rating:
Summary: I Should've stayed on The Beach...
Review: Let me tell you something about The Beach, not only is it one of my favorite books, it's one of my favorite books to recommend. I made all my friends and family read it and they all loved it, I think it was my older sister, who's favorite author is Jane Austeen and stays away from modern lit like from the plague, who said she'd never enjoyed a book this much before. Her exact words were "the best literary experience I've ever had". So when The Tesseract came out I was the first one to but, and apparently the only one, I found out why later. The Tesseract is a failed attempt by a beginning writer to prove that he can write more than a Leo movie. After seeing the movie I do understand the writer's need to get as far away from The Beach as possible but this is ridiculous! It reads like an essay written by an ambitious 12 year old, it is uninteresting and at any given time you can skip 50 pages and not have missed any crucial events simply because - there are none! The characters are boring and after a while you are faced with the fact that you just don't care what happens to them! I am not only disappointed but in mourning for this brilliant writer who obviously is trying to impress someone god knows who, and I am sincerely hoping his new baby The Coma will redeem him from this joke.