Rating: 
Summary: Un-realized potential
Review: Being a person who found Garland's well-reviewed THE BEACH to be nothing more than a re-hashing of LORD OF THE FLIES, I can't say that I was surprised with this novel. Garland's short-lived exploration of the concept of the tesseract reveals nothing more than the fact that he has fooled himself into thinking that he is the next Joyce, who explored similar ideas with his notions of parallax and metempsychosis. Some of the reviews exhibited on this page reveal that he has fooled a few others as well. Garland's lack of interest in his own characters is revealed dually in this novel, by the brief treatment that each character receives and by the narrative's oversight of the most sympathetic character, the deformed fisherman. The most disappointing part of this novel is Garland's loss of his unique descriptive style. There are no memorable phrases here to rival those such as a "tie-dye sunset" which appear in THE BEACH. Garland is a poor man's David Foster Wallace.
Rating: 
Summary: very good with a slight flaw
Review: For starters,The Tesseract is a much better book than The Beach. Why everybody wants to knock it so much is a mystery to me. I kept thinking that it should have been a book of three short stories but ultimately Garland ties things together in a masterful way. The only flaw is a blatant and somewhat pretentious attempt at incorporating the whole 'Tesseract' theme. He actually sells his own book short by doing this. Let a very good,tight story speak for itself. Not to compare the two, but what if instead of Moby Dick, Melville would have called his book 'A ship captain explores inner meaning and life's struggle with the hunt of a whale as metaphor.'..That aside, read this book as it is brilliant in parts with great movement through time with fascinating and gripping characters.
Rating:
Summary: A Thrilla in Manila
Review: Just when everyone had pegged Alex Garland as an erudite John Grisham, he has confounded us with "The Tesseract". Make no mistake, Garland is a Writer. To begin his new adventure, I recommend first reading "Hyperspace" by Michio Kaku, which discusses 10-dimensional universes and other Grand Unified Theories. As a two-dimensional mosaic cross reveals its three-dimensional cube unfolded, the tesseract (a sort of side-to-side cross of cubes) reveals a fourth dimension of space unfolded, and so on. Garland has given us not a story but a mosaic novel. Forget character. Forget plot. Just look at the tiles of the mosaic one by one and then slowly begin to step back to observe the whole. There are tesserae of time: for Sean, a narrative cat-and-mouse chase; for Rosa, the denouement of a lifetime; for Vincente and Totoy, the instant explosion of adventure; for Alfredo, distant dreams. And there are tesserae of circumstance: a meeting gone wrong, a flat tire. And there are tesserae of place: each character living in a Philippines as different, both real and stereotypical, as if they were separate countries. All of these converge to a point in time and place, like the Big Bang of the universe, and then explode in a sudden profusion of viewpoints. Like fireworks, they are individual but whole, abstract but cohesive. Now stand all the way back and observe the entire mosaic. Some will see the inexorable march of Grecian fate. Some will see the divine hand of God. Some will see the coincidental emptiness of existentialism. Some will see the raw evolution of Darwinism, complete with an explosion of Burgess Shale magnitude. Some will see chaos theory, with patterns formed from random events. What is real, the individual stories, the collective image, the points of view or the process itself? Is it another serendipity of human nature that we somehow reflect our multi-dimensional universe? This is a GUTsy book. It cannot be read just once. Like a kaleidoscope, it surprises with each visit.
Rating:
Summary: Short, post-modernist snore
Review: This is a very short book, which the publisher has struggled to pad with lots of white space and big type (at least in my edition); but it still manages to be dull. Yes, the opening is quite good. Some of the writing is quite good, but clearly Garland has no idea how to develop his story and shies away from anything with too much plot, as if afraid of losing his literary street cred. So he opts for a meaningless and unengaging structure with lots of jumping around between characters, and ends up with a mess. That some reviewers think this is all a sign of his being a 'serious' novelist only shows how pitifully timid and easily led most of them are. Next time, I'll pass.
Rating:
Summary: Starts with a bang, ends with a whimper
Review: It starts interesting enough. Manila in the eyes of a Westerner. Garland manages to capture the grit and darkness of the city I live in. Thrilling, to say the least. But when it reaches part II (Rosa's story), it sucked big time. I don't know about readers outside the Philippines, but Rosa's part reads like something out of a high school textbook. It's cliche (at least on this part of the world); the bucolic setting, the pretty lass not marrying her provincial boyfriend, making it big in the city, and so on. This setting has been written so many times by other authors and probably students as well. The third part, also leaves much to be desired and seems irrelevant (I think). On second thought, contrary to press releases, Manila isn't even integral to the story. Sure Garland (being a frequent visitor) captured the mood, the language, the mannerisms, but his novel can take place anywhere in the world. After The Beach, I'm disappointed.
Rating: 
Summary: At least the synopsis was entertaining.
Review: After reading the synopsis, I was sold on the idea of reading this book, which I then did over the painstaking period of a month. This book was easy to close and quite uninvolving, mainly due to the large amounts of unnecessary padding, and the simple fact that the story doesn't really go anywhere of interest. After finishing the book I was cross I had wasted my time reading it, and equally cross at the fact Mr Garland had bothered to induce such an awful attempt of literary art upon us, when he could have just sent it to the film companys, and kept us out of the equation.
Rating:
Summary: not as good as "the beach", but still impressive
Review: After reading "The Tesseract" I was impressed enough to go out and pick up "The Beach". Having read both books I can see how people who had read "The Beach" first would find "The Tesseract" disappointing, however, taken on its own merits, "The Tesseract" is still an impressive accomplishment.
Rating:
Summary: Tired idea, worse execution
Review: A disappointing book, despite the snazzy screen advertising. The author seems caught awkwardly between a desire to write a thriller, with its potential for movie deals and big sales, and Literature (capital L). The result is a self-conscious, ponderous tale, that never becomes exciting, and fails to be interesting at the intellectual level. Garland may want to be the next Grahame Greene, but for my money the comparison is a joke. In short, the book just doesn't justify its billing.
Rating: 
Summary: A classic formula, with an interesting setting
Review: Alas for Alex Garland, this novel lacks the grittiness and complexity of 'The Beach'. It's actually quite a good plot, but his misses the mark with the telling - falling back on the old formula of a single incident told by several characters. One suspects he's looking to sell the story to Hollywood. The novel certainly has a screenplay feel, and lacks depth of character. Nevertheless, it's worth a read if you don't take it too seriously.
Rating:
Summary: Good idea, but still unbelievable
Review: As a Filipino American, I read this book with a critical eye. I was impressed initially of Garland's grasp of Filipino language and his descriptions of Manila life. The narrative was not the greatest, at times slow, mundane, and lacking in texture. Part II of the book was, I think, most unbelievable. The book left me wondering whether Western writers actually see places like Manila the way it is written in The Tesseract. If so, then it gives reason not to read this book.
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