The Tesseract

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: 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: Great beach reading
Review: Alex Garland has the potential to be a great novelist. Like the Beach, the Tesseract doesn't quite pull it off, but it fails in an absorbing, entertaining and thought-provoking manner. In short, it's a good read.

The central issue of the book's three main stories is the interconnectedness of life. Our existence interlocks so unexpectedly with that of others that we can't help seeking explanation. It's as though our life-changing chance encounters mean something, but we can't quite grasp what the meaning is. Hence the tesseract, a three dimensional representation of a four dimensional shape. We see the effect, but not the shape itself. Trying to imagine a four-dimensional shape is like trying to make sense of life.

However, if philosophical musings aren't your thing, don't let the above put you off. The first eighty pages of this book are a superb example of dark and paranoid thriller writing. The suspense builds as you read to find out if the Englishman will escape alive from the clutches of Don Pepe and his henchmen. The finale of the book is nail-biting too. This kind of 'intelligent thriller' (as many live ideas as dead bodies) reminded me of William Gibson - except Garland is interested in the realism of Manilla, rather than techno-fantasy.

I loved the character portrayal in this book - so understated, so evocative. In particular, Don Pepe's murderous obsession with his Spanish blood; the musings of the PhD student in his high tower, buying dreams from street kids. Characters like these make Manilla come alive. Not one way of life but many and disparate. The city itself brings them into collision.

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: 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: Easy to miss the point
Review: I am surprised that so many people on Amazon did not like this book. The purpose of the novel is not to illustrate the Philippines for those of us who want to travel there nor is it supposed to be a mere thriller. Granted, it may be too complex and elaborate at a few points, but these points help serve the ideas behind the novel. It is about the chaotic nature of how lives come together for absolutely no reason and how we come to explain the tragedies that occur in our lives. Some of the characters use religion(corazon) while others subscribe to sciense (alfredo), but what I think Garland was trying to do was show how senseless life can seem at times and how we deal with that. It is very compassionate and mature, and for those who wanted more of "The Beach" I can only say that to expect that of an author is very narrow minded and not realistic. It you have the time check out The Tesseract because it is an interesting and unique read that is both exciting and intelligent.

Rating:
Summary: 4 dimensional - incredible
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: 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: 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.