The Tesseract

Rating:
Summary: Utter drivel
Review: This book firmly places Alex Garland as a one hit wonder. I read the beach and thoroughly enjoyed it.....so I thought I'd try the Tesseract....I wish to save anyone else the trouble. This book is patronising, incoherrent and nauseating to read. I perservered just in case there was an elegant twist at the end - there isn't.

Rating:
Summary: Oustanding interwining suspenseful
Review: Great mix of fiction, life and culture ! Good writing makes it a good reading..different from the Beach....which makes it more appealing.

Rating:
Summary: Without a doubt, the worst book I've read in years
Review: Having read and enjoyed the Beach, I decided to try The Tesseract - Big Mistake! The only thing that kept me going was the thought that it had to end soon. Badly written and I've seen more substance on the side of a cereal packet - do yourselves a favour and bypass this one.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Atmosphere nad Tension
Review: Very interesting and well-written set of interwoven events and stories centered on a single day in Manila. It starts with an English sailor waiting in a hyperdingy hotel to meet with a local mobster. As he waits he becomes more and more convinced he is about to be executed. This is intercut with the mobster in the car with his retinue treading on verbal eggshells. The two meet in an explosive climax, whereupon the book shifts to the story of a woman putting her kids to sleep. This leads to the story of her childhood in a coastal village, her the discovery of love, and we gradually learn how she came to be in Manila, married and with kids. As she talks on a cell phone to her husband, street kids throw some nails in the road puncturing his tire and delaying his arrival home. This segues into the story of two street kids and the psychological researcher who tapes their dreams. At the end, all three stories converge into a brief, bloody resolution of sorts. Garland is definitely a talented writer and I will think about reading his first book, The Beach--which I have avoided as it looks very shallow and annoying.

Rating:
Summary: A good book but not as good as "The Beach"
Review: When I was reading this book, I thought it was really cool, but after reading Alex Garland's first book, "The Beach," I realized how much better "The Beach" is! "The Beach" has likable, three-dimensional characters, while "The Tesseract" is two metaphysical and get's bogged down in details. It felt like a book, while "The Beach" felt real! It's still worth reading, but "The Beach" is twice as good. I give "The Tesseract" three and a half stars.

Rating:
Summary: Uh-huh. And what did the tesseract have to do with anything?
Review: I read this through only because I hate leaving a book unfinished. At the end I was still waiting for an explanation for the title and the appearance of the hypercube. Zero stars if 'twere possible.

Rating:
Summary: more of a clash than a flow
Review: Ok so as almost every one else has mentioned the Beach ,I am not . I could see exactly where he wanted this book to go and in what format to do it , but this ,unfortunately did not happen . He tries to give a compasionate edge to the characters by explaining phases of there life. For example Jojo - where was that all going ? and again Alfredo , what was the over all reason in him apart from a tool to give us a greater insight into the street kids life and thoughts . When Alfredo's tool like job is done he is quickly dropped . He was trying to make the reader empathise with the characters and wasted a rather lot of time trying to do so. The nice touches where when the different story lines clashed and characters interacted .However this did not happen very often and when it did it was rather brief . Ending on a more positive note I still believe that Garland has the skill to do much better than this and eventually do so .

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding
Review: If you pick up this book expecting another "The Beach" you'll be disappointed. While the Beach was entertaining and slightly vapid, this is a sharply observed, beautifully paced, almost impressionistic novel. I give the author credit for even trying something this daring. That he succeeds is a bonus to all readers.

Rating:
Summary: Page filling at its best
Review: I wasn't ready to dismiss the author just quite yet, after pointless and shallow The Beach. I have never put down a book after 18 pages, until now. I will give Alex Garland credit for at least moving The Beach along, but The Tesseract's opening scene just sits there for 18 pages. I guess if I want to read a great adventure/suspense novel, I should just dust off my old Alistair MacLean novels.

Rating:
Summary: fascinating
Review: Alex makes it look so easy. I attempted a similar structure in a recent novel & only wish I had read this book first so I could see the possibilities. Most impressive to me was the way Garland writes the human thought process. The entire space of the book is set over a time frame of perhaps an hour, possibly less. What makes up the bulk of it is the characters' internal monologues, spliced between snippets of fast-paced action. For example, the first character, Sean, standing at a doorway about to kill two people on the other side, is distracted by sweat trickling down his face and begins to meditate on the nature of scratching. The book is told from multiple viewpoints culminating in a fast-paced finale told from 13 different points of view. Very impressive.