Rating: 
Summary: The cycle and its breakdown
Review: A Tesseract is a four dimensional entity, or a hyper-cube. Sometimes, the word is used to describe the three dimensional object that is formed when a four dimensional object unravels. A tangible outcome of an intangible concept. The Tesseract also doubles as the title of writer, Alex Garland's, follow up to his magnificent debut, The Beach. The latter's reputation was somewhat muddied by a mediocre cinematic adaptation, but go back to it and you will find a molasses of nihilistic exuberance. Indefinable, provocative, sensational and sensationalist, The Beach was a brilliant piece of work. Anybody who tells you otherwise is a vile little vermin. PG rated obscenities aside, Garland has, wisely, not tired to duplicate his earlier success, but instead has chosen to head into a subtler (not necessarily less violent) terrain. Fortunately, he has lost none of the vigor that made his first novel such a success. Think of each of the three major interdependent plot threads that run through The Tesseract as an isolated hurricane. Every protagonist goes through paranoia, weariness, succor, discovery and paranoia again. A British expatriate, Sean, sitting alone in a crummy Manila hotel, waiting for a local mestizo to grant him an unofficial safe passage for the business he represents goes a little beserk. He looks at the crummy room's crummy telephone. It has cigarette burns all over it. He looks at the keyhole and sees that it has a metal plate blocking it. He decides that mestizo and his henchmen are out to kill him, he waits, with a gun. Garland then leaves the agitated Brit, mid-cycle, and flashes back to a point in his past. At first it seems abrupt, the past doesn't completely explain the present. Instead of going back to the hotel room, Garland then observes the mestizo and his henchmen for awhile, they too have pasts that are, briefly, dragged into this hot, congested Manila afternoon. They all meet at the hotel, shots are fired, and the invisible cycle is broken by random violence. Instead of following the chase that ensues, Garland leaves this story and observes a middle class Manila family, a doctor, her mother, her children, her husband and their complicated history. Off all novels you'd expect Garland's follow up to The Beach to resemble, the least likely would be Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, yet this segment is strongly reminiscent of that novel. A third brilliantly observed tale of two homeless kids is introduced. The kids sell their night dreams to a rich, strange child psychologist, who then looks out from his high rise luxury apartment and observes the inter-connectedness of things. If nothing else, The Tesseract is an amazing architectural achievement. But there is an inherit danger with a novel as ambitious as this one. The temptation for authors to fall in love with metaphysics and other crude forms of self love has consistently proven too great to resist. For The Tesseract to stand a chance the characters must be, at least, three dimensional, making choices and not succumbing to an author's grand vision of the world. A luxury Garland provides. The only thing certain about the inevitable convergence of the plot is that it will involve violence to counteract the violence that started this chain. It is a testament to Garland's great skill that he seems a mere observer of this outcome rather than a manipulator. Comparisons with The Beach are, ofcourse, mandatory. In that respect most critics have judged The Tesseract to be more mature, ambitious, level headed, expansive and less jaded. I would agree and I'm heartily recommending it. I would also argue that the Tesseract, because of those qualities rather then inspite of them, is the lesser of the two.
Rating: 
Summary: Son of a Beach!
Review: Do not buy this book if you want a sequel to The Beach, it is written in a completely different style and pace. Alex Garland is obviously a very intelligent young man, every now and then he shows this in The Tesseract by rambling on about 4 dimensional objects and the psychology of all his characters, but these great jaw-dropping paragraphs are not part of the novel in any way, in fact I think Garland puts them in to try and teach us all a thing or two. The Tesseract is a strange novel, Garland introduces us to a writing style I've never seen before, he describes in great detail the events leading up to someone being shot, then quickly cuts to that persons funeral and all the events around that, only to cut back to the moment of death - right where he left off, this is a strange and joyful way of writing. He uses this technique several times during the novel, ending on a cliff-hanger, seeing the resolve, only to conclude the cliff-hanger and get back into the story. Playing with out minds it seems is Garland's speciality and this book is written just write for the big screen, though it would never be made. The characters are too weak, with as many as 6 main characters and 10 others being crammed into a 350 page novel. The book charts four different lives and lifestyles and throws them all together for an explosive ending - kinda. Stick with Garland he will soon be an icon, but not with this novel, wait for the next one!
Rating:
Summary: A more mature Garland
Review: After one antisocial day and a sleepless night I have begun and finished The Tesseract. I went out to buy it the minute after I had finished The Beach. The Tesseract is a fantastic story about different people and how their lives in some amazing ways collide. Garland shows great insight in childhood, parenthood, in being a woman (or a young girl becoming a woman), in loneliness - in everything really! Some say it is Tarantino-like... I don't know - it has more depth than that! Advise: If you like Garland I am pretty sure you would like Douglas Coupland or perhaps Robert McLiam Wilson.
Rating: 
Summary: 3.5 Stars!
Review: The Tesseract is very Pulp Fiction like in style. It intertwines three short stories into one very nicely. Although the first thirty or so pages of the novel are very slow and boring don't give up. It's gets way better with time and you'll be glad you kept reading. The story is very engrossing and cleverly written. However, if you are expecting The Beach, this is not the same genre of book. Happy reading!
Rating:
Summary: The whole more interesting than its parts...
Review: "The Tesseract" is perhaps not what one would expect as a follow-up to Alex Garland's enormously popular and well-received debut novel "The Beach". While "The Beach" may perhaps be construed as a decently plotted pop culture novel (albeit with ominous undertones), this second novel takes the reader in a different direction, culminating in an ending that seems designed to - God forbid - make the reader think. With that said, I have mixed feelings about this book. The first part is misleading - taut, psychologically compelling, more-or-less a return to the territory Garland first explored in "The Beach". What follows though is a book that strives to be multi-layered (like a jigsaw puzzle, if you will - hence the meaning of its title)with seemingly disjointed sections all coming together for a big bang-'em-up ending. While the whole is rather perversely satisfying, the sum of its parts don't always make for a compelling read. The central focus of the plot is the story of a young village girl named Rosa who has a brief - and fatefully aborted - relationship with a semi-deformed young fisherman whose family seems cursed by physical deformity. She moves away to study medicine in Manila, marries a decent, loving husband, and has two children by him. When she and her family revisit her village upon the death of her father, tragedy strikes in the form of a reunion with her ex-childhood lover. Another section of the book revolves around a Ph.D candidate's thesis interpreting the dream-lives of Manila's street kids. All of these disparate elements come together in a conclusion that is surprising, well-crafted, and really very exciting. Upon closing the book for the last time, I found myself reflecting on all that had come before, piecing it together and then tying it into the book's title "The Tesseract". Unfortunately, I found a good portion of the novel slow-going. The writing certainly isn't bad - Garland has a terrific feel for naturalistic dialogue - it just didn't keep me anticipating what was coming on the next page. Again, however, I really enjoyed the pay-off at the end as well as scattered passages throughout. This is the work of a serious novelist-in-development. I eagerly await Mr. Garland's next book and look forward to the development and maturity of his craft.
Rating:
Summary: A Ride Worth Repeating
Review: I had thought I wouldn't like this book for the simple reason that is it set in Manila (where I am from). I thought the characters would be shallow and lack any substance, given the fact that Alex Garland is an outsider to the goings on in Manila and couldn't possibly get inside the head of a Filipino, in any part of society. I was wrong. The people I met in the course of reading this book were so real. Alex Garland had a pulse on what runs through the mind of a Filipino...the haciendero/gangster who longs to be a true Spaniard, the street urchin who survives the perils of the urban jungle, the mother with a lost love in the past. Once the book reached its climax, I held my breath, afraid for the ride to be over. But when it did end, like most rides enjoyed, it was worth doing it all over again.
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: The Beach is better
Review: I wasn't too fond of this sophomore novel from Garland. I found it hard to follow, and didn't really care too much for the characters. He tried too hard with this one.
Rating:
Summary: Lots of adrenaline throughout
Review: The book isn't very long, and the pace is surprisingly quick. I found myself racing through it pretty quickly. It's a good read, really, though I haven't read The Beach and can't compare. Garland is very good at creating atmosphere, such as the thick heat of Manila, or the isolation of Barrio Sarap. Each of his characters are compelling-- I especially wanted to know more about Rosa. The crash/burn ending wasn't exactly unexpected, but it had a resonance that was surprising for such a short work.
Rating:
Summary: Fine on its own, but not what some wanted.
Review: There are about 90+ reviews to this book so far, and if you choose, you can read them all. As best I could tell, those who didn't like "The Tesseract" tend to be disappointed because it is not like Garland's first novel, "The Beach." But if you judge this on its own merits -- which I did, not having read The Beach -- I think you will be pleased. If you read the reviews, you'll get the impression that this is a crime novel, too. I think that would be a mistake... Others may focus on characters (a mistake, too). I believe this novel's star is its structure. The story threads that are here (there are basically three of them) are all fine, but they are laid out so as to support Garland's effort at an intricate structure. The novel starts off somewhat linear, but then retraces itself from another character's view... And with each retelling, it gets less linear, and the non-linearity gets more complex. Now, the interesting thing for me is that as Garland build in ever greater complexity from the weaving of the story lines, the characterizations do not suffer. The story could have been more linear, and the story would have been just as fine - - that is, the characters would made as much sense, and the story would have made as much sense. But Garland has made a clear choice in his telling, and I'm all for it. * * * * * * * * * * * OK, beyond the structure, what do we have? As several other reviews point out, it's basically three character lines which converge. One involves a smuggler holed up in a hotel for a meeting, who misinterprets a series of events, and the same sequence of events from others' eyes -- leading to an intense gun battle. The second story involves a family whose lives will intersect with the escaping smuggler, and the events that led to their point in the story. The third involves two street urchins and their pursuit of the gun battle (and events leading to their chase). Each narrative is gracefully provided with details to make the thread seem rich with emotion and independence. As a result, no one thread dominates, and characterizations of this as a "crime novel" pay too much attention to the initial thread surrounding the smuggler. I truly enjoyed reading this novel - - it's a great display of artistry and skill.
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