The Tesseract

How do you follow up on a hugely successful first novel?

This is the question that must of faced Alex Garland after the success of his book The Beach and on the whole I feel that this book is a fairly successful attempt and in large parts that's down to the differences rather than the similarities.It would have been so easy for Garland to just write another travelogue book based on young backpackers but this is very different in feel despite starting in a run down hotel room as did The Beach.

This book revolves around three people whom on the face of it have nothing in common but whose paths cross on one eventful night. We have a British sailor waiting to meet a vicious gangster, a middle-class doctor at home putting her children to bed show more whilst awaiting her husband's return from work and a homeless street urchin.

The story is told in three separate vignettes as each main character are fleshed out and in many ways it is a sort of horror story where the monsters are real people,Don Pepe the ruthless gangster and estate owner, the ex-lover who scolds a child with acid out of jealousy and a father/society who has abandoned a child to fend for himself in the middle of a sprawling city.

At first the divergent strands of the book are a little confusing but the author paints such a vivid picture that you feel impelled to carry on reading until the brutal climax. The whole tale takes place over on night in Manila and in many respects this is where the book falls down IMHO. The climax when it comes feels rushed and overly contrived but on the whole it is a very good attempt at a second novel but does suffer in comparison with the first. show less

It must have been really hard to follow 'The Beach' - one of my favourite novels of all time. This one is also set in Asia, but has a very different feel; darker and more cryptic.

There was an incident quite early on in the book, illustrative of a tyrannical landowner, so harrowing that it imprinted itself on my memory. It remains there, quite vivid, despite the books I have read in the meantime. Beyond this point I found the plot diffuse to the point of incoherence, and whilst I could sense a lot of profound points being made, I wasn't able to get at them. That single scene early on is the abiding memory I have of this book and accounts for all the stars I have given it in the rating.

the beginning of this was tough for me, but by the end i was much more interested and invested. i still wouldn't say i liked it by the end, or that it was successful at whatever it was doing, but i might say that it was approaching that, and that some of the fault might be that this reader might not be smart enough for what he'd doing here. still, though, it didn't feel like enough for me, either in general as a book, or in specific, in his purpose. there are some lovely bits, though, that stand out. as it improved and came together better by the end, my rating is higher than it would have been at first.

i do think that he must have been hard pressed to come up with something big or impressive after his first book, and that had to be show more stressful. this didn't do it for me, but i'd give his next book a try, both on the strength of his first, and the knowledge that getting past that first one can't be easy. show less

Spare and spartan, and very clever. It begins in a hotel room, as a man waits for a mob boss and his henchmen to arrive. A deal's about to be done, but it goes wrong. Lives are taken.

And from there, an explosion - not real, but metaphysical. Everyone's life is examined, their reasons for being who they are and what they are, and why they are, all being contested.

A Tesseract is the three dimensional representation of a four dimensional object, like a net diagram of a cube folded out suggests the presence of three dimensions, not two. The book is exactly like that, and after the success of "The Beach," this is just brilliant.

The setup of this novel seems a bit of a stretch – wavering over onto the side of the improbable. However, the actual rendering takes us on a journey filled with very believable characters caught up in a gritty tale set in the Philippines. Not exactly sure what Garland is trying to say with this one, but it is an exciting thrill ride structured a bit like _Run Lola Run_.

This book/puzzle comes together into a fascinating story with genius writing. If you appreciate an intricate story or memorable writing, this is a good choice. You're just as well off, also, going in without any knowledge of what you're getting yourself into. If you can manage this, the story will strike you as you read as if the characters are in front of you, telling them their actions and feelings in person. The book comes across as frighteningly real, and is unforgettable as a result.

It was alright. Atmospheric and lots of different lives crashing together at the end - the tesseract of the title. Wow, took me exactly a year to read this, not because it was hard to read or unintersting - just not my cup of tea.