Sometimes, the cities we visit stir something within us, a need to create. To write. To paint. To photograph.When I first landed in Manila, I saw a city that stretched endlessly in all directions. Towering skyscrapers rose beside low-slung houses. The patchwork of brightly colored tin roofs in the slums painted the cityscape in vivid tones. Looking out the taxi window, I saw crumbling buildings, balconies heavy with drying laundry, tangled bundles of electric wires defying logic, sleek luxury hi...

Set in the Philippines, this novel contains three distinct non-linear narratives that portray three groups of people who would not normally interact, but whose storylines eventually converge in a violent fashion. It begins in a hotel room, where a man waits for a mob boss. It is a book best read with little knowledge of what will happen. It may seem disjointed at first, but the separate threads eventually converge. Backstories for the three groups are woven into the narrative. It is told in a fr...

OK thriller set in Manilla. It is about the intersection of three groups of peoples lives' culminating in a bloody coming together for the one and only time at the end. Spoiler - not everyone walks away

I was totally blown away by this experimental novel. As a writer myself, I can honestly say Garland solves a number of very difficult plotting and structural problems with astounding skill. That's something that might not be noticed by a casual reader reading for story only. I literally put the novel down and applauded at one point, I was so impressed by his grace and dexterity.

My only critique is that the middle section is too long and takes in too much backstory of that character. That's all.

A reread from fifteen years ago? Since that time, Garland has morphed into one of the strongest screenwriters in Hollywood. When he hits, he hits hard. He rarely misses. This novel is fine. There’s a very turn of the century/Fight Club era Palahniuk by way of Guy Ritchie directed film style to the writing that comes about with the extremely fractured narrative and the frequent use of synecdoche. It makes the novel feel dated in an unflattering way. At its heart the novel is still entertaining th...

Set in the Philippines, The Tesseract pretends to be some action thriller novel that takes the reader through the lives of various people. It was a largely forgetful book. The protagonist, I think his name was Simon (see? I can't even remember) was bland. Every other character was bland too. Thankfully the Philippines was given some life in this book. Garland nicely described the scenery here, and he doesn't sugar coat it as to make it sound ridiculous.The plot was really dumb. The climax wasn't...

I have just finished this book this morning and I, like many others, picked up this book after thoroughly enjoying his previous novel The Beach. When starting The Tesseract, you can clearly feel the similarities between this book and his previous but The Tesseract quickly becomes its own story. The book follows several different characters and jumps around within the timeline. It starts with Sean in a `roach infested hotel' as he awaits the arrival of local gangster Don Pepe. Next we have a Fili...

The Tesseract: a recapSean is in a hotel room that is dirty and also hotSean is expecting a phone call from a dudeSean is kind of cRAZy and there is blood on the sheetsblood because someone got murdered and TORTURED TO DEATH PROBABLY or it was a period or somethingNOPE DEFINITELY TORTURE>we listen to Sean be crazy for 20 pages<-sean lies down puts a photo of a random girl on his chest and feels calmer (no he does not actually know who this girl is but it makes him feel better but not altog...

The Tesseract by Alex Garland is a novel that lets the reader wonder at his/her own insignificance. It is a theme that's already been implanted there, in the modern reader’s sophisticated brain, by Voltaire, and made new again by this generation’s collective and personal psyche, which is quite enormous/ambitious in scope. It’s no travesty to say that the society of 2011 is somewhat the intended dream of our future from way before the millennium--that is, we are living the 2011 version according ...

The Tesseract suffers from the case of the infamous sophomore jinx simply because it is in no way like Garland's fabulous debut novel The Beach.The voice is completely different. The Beach was linear, almost cinematic in scope, a rather conventional novel; The Tesseract is experimental, and the writing dry, sparse and moody. The novel is set in Manila, and through three separate, non-linear narratives it shows the story of three groups of people who would normally never met, but whom fate has co...