Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32854 in Books
• Published on: 1999-07-01
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
A single evening in Manila hints at shared consciousness and the circular nature of time and experience. More ambitious than his successful debut, The Beach, Alex Garland's second novel follows three seemingly disparate stories that converge just this side of possible. Opening pages are reminiscent of a Raymond Chandler detective story: the dirty hotel room that "didn't know it was a hotel, or had forgotten"; the flinty, deep thinking protagonist; a meeting with rough-cut thugs. But just when we expect the arrival of the stock sultry woman, the cast of characters begins to assume the more recognisable aspects of ordinary life--to eerie effect.

Garland shows a talent for finely crafted phrases that emboss an image and encapsulate a moment. One minor character's brief sensory flashback provides more human insight than the pages of descriptive overload in the usual thriller. The Tesseract is an exciting tale that never stoops to the level of popcorn storytelling. --Samantha Starmer

Synopsis
Gripping from the first pages, Garland's new novel is set over three hours during one night in Manila. With the pace and suspense of "The Beach", this novel intertwines three stories: the shady dealings of gangsters, the tautly and emotionally drawn tale of a Phillipino family and the violent lives of a gang of street kids, until their different lives collide in a shattering finale. It is beautifully written and unputdownable. 'Is Alex Garland the new Graham Greene? After "The Tesseract" the question needs to be asked ...a powerful narrative drive, exotic locations that unfold like a corrupt and mysterious flower, and a moody intelligence that holds everything together' - JG Ballard.

Customer Reviews

The Hypercube Unravelled...
Alex Garland is my favorite novelist, his books never fail to utterly compell and astound me, but the thing I like most about his work is something that is a somewhat difficult to put down in words. Its his style of writing, I think, but its more than that. He seems, here as with the Beach, to put a whole lot of himself into his writing. However, where the Beach was driven by a wonderful first person narrative, here the voice is third person and constantly shifting, while still posessing that jaunty edginess that Garland even manages to impose in hs screenwriting.
The best thing about it is that's not even his most stunning attribute, because while he posesses a keen eye for the intricacies of life and of human thought and expression comparable to Alan Bennet, (and which contributes to the stunningly well drawn characters in his books) he marries this with a talent for plot weaving akin to Graham Greene, and it is in The Tesseract that this becomes fully evident. Unlike the Beach's linear plot, Garland here sacrifices the brilliant first person narration for an infinitely more subtle prismic storyline, wound together by a single event and metphorised by the titular "Tesseract."
Not only this but, as with the Beach, The characters are amazingly real, and what's more the characters' chemistry is much more lucid and, at times, frankly heartwarming. The best examples are of the subtle story of friendship between Teroy and Jojo, who are technically bad guys, but not written as such, or Corazon and Rosa. The interaction between characters is so well written it could be a true story.
Garland is proving himself a force to be reckoned with, and at the rate his style is growing at maturing, I await the next book with baited breath.

Very very poor
Do not expect this to be good because you've read the beach, that book is brilliant, this is incredibly dull, a real mission to keep yourself reading and personally I wouldn't waste your time - try re-reading 'the beach' again instead!

Utter Dissapointment
After reading the beach and enjoying it thoroughly, I was excited to plunge into another Alex Garland novel. How disappointed I was.

As I approached the last 1/4 of this book it became obvious where it was heading and any surprise ending was non existent. I completed this book when working away and threw it in the star bucks bin after finishing my coffee and the book although I did contemplate sending it to the publisher outlining what a waste of my time it was reading it.

Still, in Garlands defense, it must be incredibly hard to reproduce such calibre as the Beach. Better luck next time.