The Tesseract [Paperback]

Alex Garland (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 10, 2000

One of the most acclaimed thrillers of the year...

The "extraordinary"* national bestseller by the award-winning author of The Beach.

"Riveting...The Tesseract offers myriad secret pleasures beyond its seemingly plot-driven narrative of intrigue in the streets of Manila."-San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

"The Tesseract has the traits of a thriller, but it's also a love story, a character study, a portrait of life among Manila's street kids, even an experiment in narration...a feverish, affecting, altogether captivating story....What really makes The Tesseract so gripping is the author's dazzling performance as a storyteller-not the bloody climaxes per se but the innovative techniques and deft changes of pace with which they are related. This is one of those rare novels that can be read for thrills but also taken apart and examined the way a jeweler does a fine watch. Garland also lavishes his characters with quirks that ring true, outbursts of human oddity that transform a moment that most authors would rush past into something memorable...all but flawless, a tour de force of brilliant narration and psychological acuity."-i>The Washington Post

"Virtuosic...cinematic, poetic, terrifyingly precise."-The New York Times Book Review

"Bristles with suspense...mature, intelligent, and rewarding."-People

"[A] swift psychological thriller...beautifully rendered."-Spin

"Powerful, exotic...unfold[s] like a corrupt and mysterious flower."-J.G. Ballard

"Thoroughly assured...violently entertaining."-Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

"A steam engine of a narrative."-Newsweek

"Reminiscent of Graham Greene."-The New Yorker

"Delivers tremendous speed and style."-Dallas Morning News

"A dangerously hot novel."-The Christian Science Monitor

"Inventive and compelling."-Los Angeles Times

"A dashing tour de force."-St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"Richly emotional."-Harper's Bazaar

"[A] page-turner."-Time Out New York

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In The Tesseract, set in muggy, scary Manila, Alex Garland again proves himself the past master of the youth paranoia novel. His first novel, The Beach--a tale of Western tourists on a druggy Thai isle--was dubbed a Gen-X Lord of the Flies. It made him Britain's richest 28-year-old writer even before Leonardo DiCaprio starred in the movie version. Now Garland ups the literary ante with an intricate three-part crime-story structure that several critics have compared to Pulp Fiction (only without the jokes). It's hard-boiled yet lyrical, subtle yet simple. Garland has three sets of characters collide, as if in a devilishly devised model-train wreck involving real trains, and his Manila is more grittily realistic than his Thailand. The first protagonist is Sean, an English seafaring lad who's about to meet the gangster Don Pepe, who's upset because Sean's boss recently missed a protection payment. It's not just the tarmac-melting heat that accounts for Sean's sweaty state of mind. As Don Pepe's posse's footsteps get louder outside his room, Sean glimpses his face in the mirror "in a state of flux. Unable to resolve itself, like a cheap hologram or a bucket of snakes, the lips curled while the jaw relaxed.... Fear, Sean thought distantly. Rare that one got to see what it actually looked like." Garland's great gift is conveying such mental states with the economy and grace of a Muhammad Ali punch. One feels that Don Pepe is about to reach up from the book and do violence to the reader.

Next comes the entire, tensely compressed life story of Rosa, a rural beach beauty turned big-city physician. Rosa is tormented by memories of her first love at 16, a man who comes crashing back into her life. In the last section, Sean and Don Pepe's thugs literally crash into her life, along with the book's third star duo, tough street kids Cente and Totoy. The Tesseract's vivid images and breakneck chases make it unsurprising to learn that Garland started out as a comic-book author, though his second novel really bears comparison with Robert Stone's Dog Soldiers. --Tim Appelo --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

The tesseract of Garland's title refers to the reduction of a four-dimensional cube to a three-dimensional one: "We can see the thing unraveled, but not the thing itself." In an attempt at similar dimensionality, Garland (The Beach) has written a novel that operates on two levels. His characters intersect in a metaphysical web and also in a violent series of coincidences. A sailor named Sean waits to rendezvous with a crime boss named Don Pepe in a seedy hotel in Manila. Sean kills Don Pepe in ambush, but the dead man's henchmen chase Sean through the streets of Manila. This is action-movie stuff, but the story soon moves through a whole new cast of characters. Sean runs past two street boys and ends up cornered in a family's home in an upper-class neighborhood. Garland now takes up these secondary characters and tells their stories, deconstructing the exoticism of his premise. We read of a woman named Rosa's romantic history and her father's death; and we learn of the street waifs' desperate lives. The boys sell their dreams to a psychologist named Alfredo, who is writing a thesis about the unconscious lives of Filipino street kids. Although Garland's allusions to super-symmetry and tesseracts are far-fetched, the reader will come away impressed by his sense of place and his unique storytelling, which combines a brisk, complex plot with an ability to get into the souls and skins of people. BOMC and QPB alternate; author tour. (Feb.) FYI: Leonardo DiCaprio will star in the movie version of The Beach.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Trade (January 10, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573227749
• ISBN-13: 978-1573227742
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (144 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #926,535 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very Tight., February 9, 2000

By 

David Hirschman - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Tesseract (Paperback)

After spending all last year giving "The Beach" to friends and telling them how good it was, it's nice to finally have another book to rave about. Something about Alex Garland's writing really speaks to me. I finished "the Tesseract" felling as I had when I finished "the Beach", like it was a book I wished I'd written myself. Its simultaneous allowance for stark reality, comic-book fantasies and mythological backgrounds, is really stunning. There's so much to this book, and all the real-time action takes place in maybe half an hour. I don't think that this is better or worse than "the Beach", I just think it cements Garland's reputation as a serious writer of fiction for my generation, and I'm already looking forward to his next book.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant..., December 17, 2002

By 

Dianna Johnston "Compulsive Reader" (Joplin, MO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Tesseract (Paperback)

I wasn't sure what to expect after reading Alex Garland's incredible debut, The Beach. I was hoping for similar excitement and fast-paced adventure. Well, I definitely got that in spades! The Tesseract is so much more realistic and dramatic, and I was feverishly turning pages to find out how this tesseract would unravel.

Told in four parts, The Tesseract begins with Sean, a sailor on the shipping waters of Manila, waiting in a seedy, run-down motel for the gangster, Don Pepe, and his motley crew. Then the story switches gears entirely and begins the tale of Rosa, a woman who remembers her first love, Lito, through flashbacks. This part of the story is told gently and almost romantically. The next story follows two Filipino street kids, Vincente and Totoy, as they wander the streets of Manila in search of hand-outs and a little excitement. Finally, the fourth part, a gritty and fantastic conclusion, has all three stories violently entwined.

I'm positive this novel was no easy feat to write; however, Alex Garland has done it flawlessly. The stories within this novel are powerful and dramatic, some violent, one wistful and romantic, and all are stunning and solid. A perfect novel to pick apart and invoke energetic discussions. Some things might go over novice readers' heads (when one of the characters, Alfredo, waxes philosophic), but for the most part it is easily understood. A highly recommended novel about how your destiny can be shaped by strangers, and how forces beyond your control can come crashing into your life in a moment's notice. Brilliant.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Easy to miss the point, February 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Tesseract (Hardcover)

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.