Tesseract

by Alex Garland

Alex Garland's international bestseller, The Beach, received extraordinary praise, and his writing was compared to Hemingway, Greene, Conrad, Golding, and Huxley. His new novel, The Tesseract, is a bold departure from The Beach, and demonstrates the enormous range of Garland's talent.

The Tesseract is a Chinese puzzle of a novel, beautifully written and suspensefully crafted. Set in the Philippines and spanning three generations, it follows three stories whose characters' fates are gangsters on a chase through the streets of Manila; middle-class parents putting their children to bed in the suburbs; and a couple of street kids and the wealthy psychologist who is studying their dreams. It is a novel that balances science against religion, and our wills against our fates, asking the ever elusive question of where meaning lies.

Genres: Fiction, Thriller, Mystery, Book Club, Contemporary, Crime, Adventure

266 pages, Paperback

Published February 28, 2018

About the author

Alex Garland (born 1970) is a British novelist, screenwriter, and director.

Garland is the son of political cartoonist Nick (Nicholas) Garland. He attended the independent University College School, in Hampstead, London, and the University of Manchester, where he studied art history.

His first novel, The Beach, was published in 1996 and drew on his experiences as a backpacker. The novel quickly became a cult classic and was made into a film by Danny Boyle, with Leonardo DiCaprio.

The Tesseract, Garland's second novel, was published in 1998. This was also made into a film, starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers. In 2003, he wrote the screenplay for Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later, starring Cillian Murphy. His third novel, The Coma, was published in 2004 and was illustrated with woodcuts by his father.

In 2007 he wrote the screenplay for the film Sunshine—his second screenplay to be directed by Danny Boyle and star Cillian Murphy as lead. Garland also served as an executive producer on 28 Weeks Later, the sequel to 28 Days Later.

Garland also wrote the first screenplay for Halo, the film adaptation of the successful video game franchise by Bungie Studios.

He made his directorial debut with Ex Machina, a 2014 feature film based on his own story and screenplay.

His partner is actress/director Paloma Baeza.

Reviews

[Fabian · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 to 1999, the very oracular year. There is an omnipresent ghost that hovers above it all, called Globalization, and this specter is felt everywhere: from the smallest villages of Thailand to the most industrialized cosmopolitan cities of the U.S. This current feeling had been hinted at way before it even got here.

Alex Garland is a remarkable writer. He says that there is in life, in his novel, “something… you are not equipped to understand.” The Tesseract is "[that] thing unraveled, but not the thing itself.” (249) This conclusion is reached only after having read the three distinct vignettes which finally come together in the impressive fourth act. Cohesiveness is found once all stories are put together, like a jigsaw puzzle. The three stories are completely different from one another in tone and style, though the writer’s voice is identifiable & easy to read (but it strays from the comprehensible by oftentimes entering the realm of the poetic).

This writer has very little to hide: he is definitely more about exposing secrets than hiding them (as opposed to countless other great modern British novels, including Ishiguru’s Never Let Me Go, Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty or anything Julian Barnes). The Tesseract is a terrific Masterpiece.

[Maciek · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 connected in a most violent way.
There are good bits in The Tesseract, but as a whole the novel falls rather short. The characters aren't particularly memorable and the concept of the tesseract is thrown in almost desperately, as a bit of novelty could shed an entirely new light on the familiar concept of the same incident being related by different people. Garland offers us a bunch of quick, skilfully drawn sketches and fluently switches between them, much like Quentin Tarantino did in Pulp Fiction.
While not as spellbinding as The Beach, The Tesseract is fast paced and has its moments (The Filipino love story, the man who buys dreams) but as a whole the novel feels like a concept that wasn't entirely fleshed out. It feels more like a transitional piece, of a writer in-developement, who has estabilished himself in one field and doesn't fear trying new things. It is sad that Garland seems to have abandoned writing novels and now concentrates on adapting them for the screen. Maybe he only had one great work in him? The Tesseract unfortunately offers no answer.

[Linna]

The Tesseract: a recap

Sean is in a hotel room that is dirty and also hot

Sean is expecting a phone call from a dude

Sean is kind of cRAZy and there is blood on the sheets

blood because someone got murdered and TORTURED TO DEATH PROBABLY or it was a period or something

NOPE 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 altogether less cray)

-sean points to a door and says "You," ... "Are all about me." This seems significant for some reason

-sean looks through peepholes and imagines someone killing himself here

--------POV change-------------

the dude sean is expecting is also crazy. crazy cruel gangster dude called don pepe

the driver of the car, Jojo, remembers a story his dad told him while living in a plantation

SUDDEN FLASHBACK

where some dude went crazy when he was chopping sugar canes, but is now a pretty swell old guy

the story also inspires fEAR of don pepe because he made crazy 'red mist' old guy cut off Fatboy's hands (and Fatboy was nice dude)

back to present

THEY RAN OVER A CAT

Jojo is having trouble shooting the cat to end it but then the cat JUMPS ON HIS CHEST and then it dies

meanwhile sean remembers meeting don and jojo and co for the first time. his buddy/leader Alex mentions a crazy old guy who sounds exactly like jojo's crazy old guy except it puts jojo's memory into question as this COG works with boats and cranes, not sugar canes (wat)

in flashback, sean is also established as kind of a weenie

END FLASHBACK

they arrive at the hotel a little late

knockin on the door

Sean suddenly starts SHOOTING EVERYONE and runs out of the door killing don and bubot and runs into another room

jojo and his friend are like WTF okay LET'S KILL HIM

sean runs away, but not before shooting the concierge JUST BECAUSE HE WAS THERE

CROSSING THE LINE THERE SEAN

sean comes across some street kids who will be important later because i read the jacket cover

------------POV change-------------

Rosa is a doctor mother lady person with two kids

one of the kids is super pretty

the other has something ambiguous wrong with his chest

SUDDEN FLASHBACK

rosa grew up and all everyone talks about is marrying and stuff

rosa falls in luuuurve with a boy with a deformed chest. his name is Lito

they can't be together because he is deformed

rosa has a deaf dad who is likeable although he doesn't say anything

rosa is super pretty though, like the prettiest person in town she can get anyone

it's okay deformed kid you remind me of a chocolate bar ilu

any who THEIRS IS A LOVE PURER THAN ANY OTHER

they meet in monsoons and stuff and love love love

END FLASHBACK KIND OF

it is revealed that rosa's husband is not deformed chest kid, it's some dude called Sonny

whelp

sonny has a flat tire and will be home late

more flashback

rosa goes home for her father's funeral

she starts screaming and crying eventually, sonny goes to take their kids away from the spectacle

as he is carrying raphael, his son the crowd won't really move for him

so HE STARTS PUNCHING THEIR FACES FOR NOT MOVING

SUDDENLY ACID

ACID ON HIS BABY ACID ON HIS HAND

a man goes to help them (aka obvs deformed chest lover kid) but wait what the man HAS A BOTTLE OF ACID WITH HIM

that shit is sick man

rosa tells sonny not to hurt him or else she'll leave him so sonny's like okay sure i guess

flashback is interrupted by SOME GUY WHO BURST THROUGH THE WINDOW AND IS USING ROSA AS A HUMAN SHIELD AND KILLED HER MOM AND

guess what

IT'S SEAN

mothereffing sean

PART THREE

you know i still don't know the point of this book i wonder if it will make sense by the end

"The Tesseract is a story of personal tragedies that occur for no comprehensible reason, and investigates the ways in which we explain them, whether through religion, myth, psychology, or science. It is a novel that balances science against religion, and our wills against our fates, asking the ever-elusive question of how we can make sense of events in a world where meaning lies beyond our grasp."

whelp

meaning of what in blazes is going on in this book is certainly still beyond my grasp

[Aimee Capinpuyan · Rating 1 out of 5]

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 especially climactic. The drama not dramatic. Some of the action was pointless and it sometimes made me wonder "What the hell were you on when you wrote this, guy?" I didn't get how the stories came together.

I did enjoy the scenes at Hotel Patay. Those were rather suspenseful and expertly told. But everything went downhill from there.

And yes. The Hotel is named Hotel Patay. Just goes to show how much thought went into this novel, because Patay is the Filipino word for DEAD. WHAT KIND OF PHILIPPINE HOTEL WOULD BE NAMED HOTEL DEAD!?

Yes I know this review sucks.

[Mirnes Alispahić · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 high-rises, and pockets of green. Smiling passersby walked indifferently past children asleep on the sidewalks, likely collapsed from hunger. Every face seemed to carry a story. Every street corner whispered one.
I imagine Alex Garland must have felt something similar upon arriving in Manila. His connection to the city is well documented. How else to explain The Tesseract, his second novel after the breakout success of The Beach?
The story opens with Sean, a British man, sitting in an abandoned hotel room, waiting to meet a gangster named Don Pepe. The faded stains on his bedsheets might be dried blood. Paranoia gnaws at him.
Don Pepe is a ruthless mafia boss who begins each day by retelling his version of history to his subordinates. He clings to a romanticized Spanish ancestry, though it’s doubtful he has a drop of Spanish blood, something no one dares to mention. In one chilling scene, he orders a subordinate’s hands to be cut off. When he later visits the dying man and sees only one hand missing, he calmly says, “I said hands, not hand.”
Rosa is a doctor living with her family in a middle-class district. Her relationship with her mother is tense, held together not by affection but by the weight of tradition. While her husband makes his way home, delayed after two street kids puncture his tire, Rosa reflects on her first love: a boy named Lito from a coastal barrio behind the mountains. A wounded, vengeful lover whom she ultimately forgives. A man bursts through their kitchen window.
Then there are Vicente and Totoyo, two children left to navigate the city on their own. Vicente arrived from the province a few years ago. He remembers the warmth of a home, of family, of a father who once left him under a streetlight and said, “Wait here.” He never returned. Totoyo, the same age as Vicente, looks far younger. His mother, a drug addict, uses other children to beg on the streets. She gives him cigarettes in a desperate attempt to connect, even if only for a fleeting moment. Out of boredom, two boys puncture the tires on a car of a man coming back home from work.
Above them all lives Alfredo, a wealthy psychologist who buys the dreams of street children for his research. In his fortress-like penthouse atop a skyscraper, he’s haunted by the ghost of the wife he couldn’t save, eaten by his own guilt.
The tesseract, a four-dimensional hypercube, unfolds in three-dimensional space as eight interconnected cubes. Only by watching its transformation from cube to cube does one begin to grasp its beauty and complexity. Garland’s The Tesseract follows the same principle. Three main narrative threads, filled with richly drawn characters, interweave and overlap. Each character brings a story that unfolds like a corner of the cube, revealing new dimensions as it shifts. Garland offers us a mosaic of vignettes, skillfully connected by the novel’s larger architecture. Each character, no matter how much space they occupy on the page, feels wholly real. That’s something few writers can achieve.
The novel is rich with subtlety and detail, many of which might go unnoticed, as Garland refuses to over-explain. Take, for example, the dialogue: when Don Pepe speaks to Sean, he uses English. Though never explicitly stated, you can almost hear his thick accent. But when he switches to Tagalog with his men, his speech becomes crisp, fluid, commanding.
I haven’t read The Beach, so I can’t compare the two novels, but Garland’s talent is unmistakable here. While some readers may see The Tesseract as an experimental follow-up, a postmodern puzzle akin to Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, others (myself included) will recognize it as a bold and haunting novel, filled with human complexity and quiet brilliance. A novel very much worth reading.

[Joy D · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 fragmented manner in very short chapters. It is written in a way that keeps the reader’s attention through trying to piece together what is going on. The tone is dark and gritty. It is a short book but a little too gruesome for me. This is the first time I have read Alex Garland’s works and I liked it enough to read another.

[Berengaria · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

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

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 though, and it does hold some of the surprises that Garland continues to cook up as a writer and director of films.

3 stars. Maybe 3.25?

[ReaderSP · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 Filipino family living out in the suburbs in Manila and finally we have some street kids living their lives in a rough environment. At first, these situations all seem completely unrelated but the links become clear towards the end of the book. I did enjoy this read but you can't help but compare it to his previous novel which had such success.

[Nate D · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of those multiple convergent plot threads, deal. What unseen factors lead to life changing events? Pretty good, not as good as the Beach, I thought at the time, though it's been ages now, so who knows.

[Dave Ireland · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring. I lost interest after page 20 and should have applied the 100 pages rule, i.e. if it hasn't grabbed me by then forget it. I wish I had.

[Viktoriya · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have no idea what I just read, to be honest. If someone asked me to give a short summary of this book, I wouldn't be able to give even one sentence.
There are multiple stories within this novel: one takes place in just one night, starts with an American named Sean shooting one of the big mafia bosses in Manila and his bodyguard. Sean is then being chased by two other bodyguards, ends up holding a young mother of two, Rosa, hostage, and all that is being witnessed by two street kids, Vincente (Cento) and Totoy.
The other story lines take us back to Rosa's childhood and her first love, to Vincente's past and how he became a street kid, with no family.
There are things in this novel that are still confusing the crap out of me, even after reading it. For example, Did Lito, Rosa's first love, really threw acid on her newborn son at her father's funeral? I don't get it . I also don't really understand the role of Alfredo, a PhD student, a very rich PhD student, who is collecting the dreams of street kids in order to write his dissertation. Also we eventually learn that his wife committed suicide by jumping for the 30th floor of their apartment, but we don't know anything about her, or why did she do it . If the author wasn't really going to provide us background of Alfredo and his wife, why put them in the book in the first place?

[Elliot Rawlings · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 An interesting look into three very different people in Manila. I enjoyed the way Alex Garland writes, although it took me a while to get used to it. The cross-overs were good and I liked how it was layed out at the end. I’m not sure how I feel about the ending which is why I haven’t given it 4 stars. Overall, though, I enjoyed it and I’m glad I picked it up.

[Issa · Rating 4 out of 5]

4★彡
Poor cat ฅ(=ዎܫዎ=)∫

【plot】 A shoot-out at a dingy Manila hotel sets off a chain reaction of events, intertwining the lives of multiple strangers in the course of a day. 【details】 Ermita, Manila; contemporary, 1998 --- multiple third-person limited pov; nonlinear narrative; converging storylines; medium-paced.

title drop: Take six cubes and arrange them into the shape of a crucifix. Take two more cubes and stick them on either side of the crucifix, at the point where the cross is made. Now you have a tesseract. A tesseract is a three-dimensional object. A tesseract is also a four-dimensional object—a hypercube—unraveled.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••
➟Quite obviously written by a visiting foreigner and geared toward Western readers. There are discordant cultural references here that wouldn't ruffle the target audience, but can't sneak past a Pinoy with nary a comment. I don't like to nitpick (and overall, I like this book), but I'm writing them down to remember them.

First off, no one in their right mind would name a hotel "Hotel Patay." That's every much as jarring and in-your-face as "Death Hotel" or "Hotel Cadaver." It's bad for business—unless it's a Halloween theme park (＾∀＾). It's the kind of linguistic detail that will make a foreigner go, "Patay means death! That's so... symbolic and deep," but is nonsensical in reality. There's also a "Sayang Avenue" and a "Sugat Drive." I don't see these names passing any sort of litmus test, as Filipinos are an extremely superstitious bunch, lol.

Alex Garland did an excellent job selecting generic Filipino nicknames such as Jojo, Bubot, Totoy, Sonny, and even the mestizo crime boss Don Pepe. But then he misreckons "Pepe" as a surname, calling Don Pepe's family "the Pepes," which is peculiar and obviously a mistake (Don Pepe's character is A.G.'s invention, but I dare say it, a mistake). One time, Jojo also refers to Don Pepe as "Mang Don Pepe," which is not only a double honorific but cancel each other out. If Don Pepe cut off his overseer's hands for dirtying his cream silk trousers, then I can imagine he would cut off the tongue of an impudent underling who dared address him as "Mang."

Noticed many other misguided portrayals here, such as a man wearing a barong tagalog at a McDonald's kid's party (˃̣̣̥ w ˂̣̣̥) and how a strong typhoon seemed to last four days without losing strength in a little barrio. But truly I can ignore all these nitpicky blunders; if this story was set in another "exotic" place, like Vietnam or Thailand, I probably wouldn't have noticed or minded these deets anyway.

I don't begrudge Alex Garland's observations of the slums of Manila. I suppose these are details that would impress a foreigner—security guards with shotguns, roaches in rundown motels, the gridlock traffic. But there were some truly acute, eloquent observations here, especially of sunsets, jeepneys, and the street urchins (mannerisms and all). 

On the whole, it's a complex and multilayered thriller with compelling characters and high-quality writing, and almost too literary for its own good. Alex Garland has been praised by the likes of Kazuo Ishiguro, Michiko Kakutani, etc., which is all the praise he needs and his aegis from the criticisms of us plebs. The scene with the cat was especially tough to read. The concept is grand of scale and ambition—the labyrinth of human connections, of chance encounters and individual choices, and how they fold and intersect in unexpected ways. The way the story ties together in the end is climactic.

[Eliza Victoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

The novel opens like a thriller. A British seaman waits in a seedy Manila hotel for a rich Filipino mafioso. He notices several things almost all at once: the dead phone, the peephole covered from the outside, rusty blood spatters on the bedsheet, a gunshot hole in the ceiling, a room with no exit. The Filipino don is in a car with his crew, weaving through the dark streets of the city, and the seaman takes out his gun, believing that they are coming to kill him.

Gunshots and a chase – the staples of action movies – but what reeled me in were the characters and their personal tragedies, and the fact that Garland set his story of one, stifling night in Manila.

Such a pleasure to read a familiar world, made new and intriguing by Garland’s compassionate treatment of his characters, his insights, and his crisp, clear, high-energy prose: Back in his room, some of the wetter stains on the street began to glow red as the sun dropped from the sky. Dropped, because the sun didn’t sink in these parts. At six-fifteen, the elastic that kept it suspended started to stretch, and at six-thirty the elastic snapped. Then you had just ten minutes as the orange ellipse plummeted out of view, and the next thing you knew it was night. You had to watch out for that in Manila. Ten minutes to catch a cab to the right side of town if you were on the wrong side.

Garland writes about Manila (and Negros and Quezon Province, in some flashbacks) as both an insider and an outsider. An outsider because he wasn’t born here, an insider because he’s been here, and has (presumably) learned much about the language and the culture. Because the familiar is made foreign (and the foreign made familiar) he sees and describes things I don’t normally pay attention to, like that rapidly sinking sun.

He obviously had fun with using Filipino words for places: Patay, Sugat, Sayang, Sarap. He also liked mentioning Filipino brand names whenever he could. Magnolia, Bench, Inquirer.

There are errors. You don’t write “Yes, po” if in your head the characters are speaking in Filipino (better stick with “Yes” or write the proper “Opo”), and you don’t say “Mang Don Pepe” because that’s an awkward double honorific (unless of course “Don” is the person’s first name).

But other than that, this is a highly readable book.

Very poignant. Unputdownable.

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Set in the Philippines, the story focuses on three very different groups of people from different walks of life, and who probably should never in real life have any reason to meet each other, but do here through a bizarre set of circumstances. Throughout the narrative, I got the feeling that each of these people have no way to understand why these things are happening to them; they just are -- and it's just a matter of timing and circumstance, with no rhyme nor reason -- and that even at the end, the whole "unraveling" if you will, I was still left with the notion, as one of the characters was so fond of quoting, "that's just the way it was." So really, if you're looking for some kind of explanation of it all, my advice is not to.

As in his first book, "The Beach," Garland starts his story in a run-down hotel room, where the character Sean notices that the peephole has been covered over. He also notices that he is in a room where the sheets have bloodstains, the phone is decorated with perfectly made circles made by cigarette burns and he deduces that he's staying in a room where a torturer once stayed. As he ponders all of the reasons why he's making this conclusion, and what scenarios may have occurred to make the bloodstains, he's also thinking about the meeting with Don Pepe, who runs some kind of Mafia-type piracy ring where he deals with merchant marine sea captains. Don Pepe arrives early and Sean jumps to the conclusion that he's going to be killed and tries to stay ahead of the game by being prepared to shoot first. He succeeds in killing Don Pepe and his right-hand man, but this leaves two more of Don Pepe's men, who chase him through the streets of Manila. His path will intersect with that of two street kids, and it will also intersect with that of Rosa, a doctor with two children, a husband and a mother, who live in a quiet upscale suburb there.

The story flows very well even though the narrative is not exactly linear; everything intersects and the chapters weave in and out of narratives of the various characters' stories. The characterization is excellent, making it possible for the readers to get into the characters' lives.

Very tense at times; recommended .

[Joe Terrell]

Published in 1999, The Tesseract is a novel written by then-young author Alex Garland, a writer who has since gone on to become one of the most renowned Hollywood screenwriters and filmmakers of his generation (Ex Machina, 28 Days Later, Annihilation, and the upcoming Civil War).

I read Alex Garland's debut novel, The Beach, and thoroughly enjoyed it, but The Tesseract was a little more difficult for me to wrap my head around. Set in Manilla (over what appears to be a 30-minute time period), The Tesseract follows various characters who intersect during a particularly violent encounter. Divided into four parts, the first three sections read as short novellas told from different POVs, and the final section is the conclusion of the event and recounts the fates of all the characters involved.

I'm being very vague in my description here because there's not much to tell without spoiling the novel. Basically, the action kicks off with Sean, a British smuggler, who's awaiting the arrival of a Filipino gangster in a seedy hotel. A foot chase ensues that ropes in a couple of street kids and ends at the home of a family that lives in the city's suburbs.

The Tesseract feels very experimental, and it's easy to tell that Garland is shifting away from being a novelist to a more visual storyteller. This novel is short, and — in my opinion — would probably work better as a short film. The "visual language" of the novel is really great and kinetic, especially in the scenes involving gunfire.

However, by the end, I think the "point" of the novel went over my head. Either that, or the "everything is connected" theme — while possibly fresh in 1999 — feels overdone 25 years later. A quick read, I'd recommend The Tesseract to anyone interested in Garland's evolution as a writer and filmmaker.

[Philip · Rating 1 out of 5]

I remember reading The Beach when it came out and really liking it - it was certainly a lot better than the film that followed - so I had high hopes for this. Unfortunately it failed to grip me enough to keep reading. I usually give a book 50 pages to engage me. I gave this one 65 and nothing had happened to keep me interested.

A guy is sitting in a room waiting for another guy to arrive. That was half the 65 pages. The other guy is on his way there in a car. That was the other half.

The quote on the front from the Mail on Sunday says it's 'an exotic speedy thriller'. I don't know what they consider speedy, but it's not the same as me. 65 pages with one bloke sitting still in a room and another sitting in a car isn't speedy to my knowledge, if it was, I'd be winning all sorts of sports awards.

So I have no idea what the tesseract of this book was, or if Loki got to it before the guy sitting doing nothing. It amazes me that books like this get such great reviews when all aspiring writers are told if they don't hook the reader right away, they won't get published. One rule for the haves and another for the have-nots.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read "The Beach" quite a few years ago and liked it very much. I mostly forgot about Alex Garland for a while until I stumbled across this one and thought I'd give it a try.

It's a very well written book, done up in three main arcs: a young British traveller, a wife and mother in suburban Manilla and a young boy living on the streets. It's peppered with other characters, but these are your three main ones. Each has their story told, and each of their stories all intersect in a well thought out way.

The main metaphor of this book is the shape of a tesseract, which is a hypercube unravelled. Garland's statement is that you can see the tesseract, but can't see the hypercube after it's been unravelled. You can see the parts when they're spread out, but not what the whole is. It's a great metaphor for this book, and if you approach it with this in mind, you'll not be too jarred by the jumps from story to story.

Great read, and I'm looking forward to picking up some more of Mr. Garland's books.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice book. There's suspense and action but it's woven with a delicate hand. Without the psychology of the characters it could have been a Michael Bay movie, but it's more like an Oliver Stone maybe, if it was a movie. Not sure if the ending was forced... but it gave me satisfaction and closure. I'm not familiar with Manila but I feel like the description of the landscape, neighborhoods, and their inhabitants was pretty accurate. Good for a quickie.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

More mature than The Beach with a more intricate structure that evokes works like Rashomon and Short Cuts - events viewed from multiple perspectives, each forming a greater whole that the characters can’t see but we can. Manilla is almost a character in its own right and no mere backdrop this time around.

One caveat: the Penguin paperback uses outsized type to inflate the page count. Bad move.

[Jennifer Hanford · Rating 5 out of 5]

why do they keep making such terrible movies out of his terrific books?

[Justin Benavidez · Rating 4 out of 5]

*3.75/Light 4*

Alex Garland is one of my favorite creators. His debut novel ‘The Beach’ was one of my grad school book club’s first selections. As a director, he adapted Jeff Vandermeer’s iconic ‘Annihilation’ and has been involved with other film projects, like ‘Sunshine’ and ‘28 Years Later’, that I consistently connect with. He’s my guy.

So, I am predisposed to analyze ‘The Tesseract’ through the lens of Garland’s career. When I read ‘The Beach’—after I had already seen a few of his films—I was a bit surprised at its straightforwardness, both in its structure and in its treatment of themes like tourism and globalization.

‘The Tesseract’, by comparison, has many of the Garlandisms that now define his work. It is a nonlinear story told in three Magnolia-esque parts, and features a mathematical metaphor at its core. It is most similar in theme to another of his underseen works: the Hulu limited series ‘Devs’. The core question they share: “What’s the purpose of all this?”

Equally important, but never as explicitly addressed in Garland’s ouvre as it is here, is The Tesseract’s Filipino setting. Garland is British, but he spent a formative six months in Manila. His stay inspired ‘The Beach’ and, clearly, this novel.

The narrative follows three pods of characters. Its first act is easily the weakest and the most reflective of this era—the British smuggler Sean reads like a bootleg Leonard Shelby (Memento) or Detective Mills (Seven), a grimy, out-of-his-depth, empty shell protagonist. It’s worth noting that these films either came out after or around the same time Garland wrote ‘The Tesseract’, so this is likely a product of the late ‘90s/Y2K zeitgeist and not direct influence.

Thankfully things get far more interesting in act 2, which features Rosa, a Filipina who’s climbed out of relative poverty to become a doctor in the Manila suburbs. In contrast with Sean’s flimsy backstory, Rosa’s is rich with subtext, romance, and tragedy.

A pair of street kids, Vincente and Totoy, serve as the dual protagonists of the third act. These boys, like Rosa, are compelling and lovable.

Our three groups come crashing together when a meet between Sean and his suppliers goes bad, leading to a footchase all the way out to Rosa’s suburban home. There is seemingly a contradiction between the butterfly effect complexities (designs?) that bring these characters together and the meaninglessness of the events that follow. All we can glean from the unknowably massive and intricate structure of our universe are the projections our senses afford us—a tesseract approximating a 4D cube.

If the first third of this novel weren’t such a drag I think I’d be able to more strongly recommend this to normies. But for Garland stans like myself this will hit, even if it’s not quite as fleshed out as his later work.

[Stephen Gallup · Rating 3 out of 5]

At the end of this jumbled narrative, I felt aligned with Vincente, a Filipino street urchin lying on the pavement after witnessing an incomprehensible sequence of violent events:

"Maybe there is nothing here I am meant to understand.
Maybe there is no meant to understand.
This means something.
Vincente stopped thinking."

A high-level distillation of those events involves roughly three story lines.

In the first, a young British guy in Manilla waits in the seedy ruin of a hotel for a meeting with an underworld character known as Don Pepe. Flashbacks reveal that Sean seems to have taken over from his former boss in a sketchy shipping enterprise, that boss perhaps having departed the scene in an inglorious manner, and that Don Pepe is the last in a line of heartless villains. The tension builds, Don Pepe arrives with three henchmen, there is shooting (a lot of it), after which Sean finds himself running through dark streets with henchmen in hot pursuit. In his panic, he barely registers the presence of "two street kids, watching him with startled and serious faces."

The only suggestion that part two might belong in the same narrative is that each begins with a passing reference to the bright colors outdoors. Aside from that, the transition is more than jarring. It's to a domestic scene involving a woman named Rosa, her two children, and her mother, winding down at the conclusion of a normal day. More flashbacks convey information about Rosa's younger days in a rural part of the Philippines and her first lover, who seems to have been the father of her older child. Her husband Sonny, meanwhile, is trying to drive home from work but is delayed by a flat tire caused when kids throw nails in front of his car. Therefore, he misses the climax of Sean's desperate flight, which occurs in his kitchen.

In the third part, the only color is on an oil slick. Now the focus is on those two homeless kids, Vincente and Tetoy, whose lives are largely taken up with fantasy or, perhaps, fantastic interpretations of the gritty world around them. For example, they put nails in front of Sonny's car because they're pretending it's an enemy tank.

Loose ends notwithstanding, I suppose it hangs together, in the same way movies like Babel and Pulp Fiction and Crash hang together. In terms of literature, it reminded me of the more ambitious (and more successful) Let the Great World Spin (which I commented on here). However, unlike that mighty endeavor, it does not hint at a constructive broader statement. All these lives do indeed connect, in a sense, but not in a way suggesting unity or progression toward improvement. To the extent that their thought processes are made accessible, even the killers (aside from Don Pepe) seem almost like regular people (assuming you can tolerate what happens to the cat). That's nice, but if all this leads to is death and confusion, it seems to be a waste of the author's talent.

I write this with awareness that arguably lots of the books I read have a nihilist or depressing effect. Maybe sometimes I'm more receptive to it than I was here. I did like The Beach.

[emilymustdie · Rating 4 out of 5]

very beautifully done and remarkable novel. I love books with intersecting storylines and this does it perfectly. I found it mildly disorienting how many different sections subsections and chapters made up this book but overall it didn’t impact the overall experience. I didn’t know what to expect from this and it definitely exceeded my expectations but i found that the first chapter is so unlike the rest of the book that after i’d got past the first storyline the book felt a lot slower. Also why the fuck did lito throw acid on the child 😮 there was no need for that i really didn’t expect it. I thought maybe him and rosa would reunite or one might kill the other idk but why get the kid involved she literally named her daughter after you and to refuse to let your husband hurt the man that threw acid over your child is crazy(ignoring the plot significance ofc)

“Totoy’s mother isn’t going to hell,she’s in it. Your father isn’t in hell, because nobody is.And he isn’t in paradise, because nobody’s there either. When a street gang chases you down unfamiliar streets, when you hit the pavement outside Legaspi Towers at two hundred miles an hour, nothing happens”

[James Crisp · Rating 1 out of 5]

I love all things Alex Garland, and this was the one piece of work solely by him I had yet to read/watch. (After - The Beach, The Coma, Ex Machina, Annihilation, Devs) and I have to say I was extremely disappointed. I came into this book really wanting to enjoy it but only managed to get just about half way through. Bar one exciting moment, the book just laboured on confusing time frames, and frankly dull characters. The short sequence and flashback/flash-forward style of writing was somewhat jarring - and meant I didn’t really know what I was reading most of the time. There were subplots layered onto subplots and it just all seemed to disappear into tangents that were unsatisfying to read. Real shame as everything else Garland has touched is gold.

[Duncan Swann · Rating 4 out of 5]

"A hypercube is a thing you are not equipped to understand. You can only understand the tesseract. This means something. For you and for me, Cente, this is the way it is. We can see the thing unravelled, but not the thing itself."

Quite different from The Beach but it shows an inkling of Garlands later flair for movie plots. An enjoyable novel about time and fate.

[Rowena · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't think this was for me. I like the idea of the three stories coming together but I don't think some of the characters were developed enough for this style. There were some unsatisfactory endings and as I'm still really confused by what happened to the baby at the funeral and Lito's part in this (or not, which is probably why I'm confused!) his final section was totally baffling!

[Rebecca Gabriel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good fast moving book to get u out of a reading slump