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.

23

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

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.

I love his movies so I thought I’d try his books, they are not on the same level. The characters were really interesting but nothing happened, the story was missing completely and the “same event told from 3+ perspectives” conceit didn’t really work. I kept hoping there would be a twist somewhere in there but it ended with an unfinished whimper.

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.

Tarantino meets science geek. Very cool book!

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.

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?

I don't know if I loved or hated this story. Maybe both at the same time. A multi-threaded plot that culminates in a tragic ending. The characters are interesting, you can love and hate them all. It is certainly not an ordinary, cheerful book. I read it in two hours, I couldn't tear myself away from the story.

It had me hooked up until it began jumping all over the place. All the momentum that built up with Sean and Don Pepe was lost after the hotel and just couldn’t claw it back. Had to force myself to continue.

I read this book for the first time maybe 20 years ago as a young man, obsessed with Garland’s the Beach. I think at the time I thought it was just okay, and ultimately I still do. I imagine this book would have to be re-evaluated today under a new lens when it comes to the stories of the Filipino people in the novel being told by a white British man. With that caveat the book can still be a decent and easy read.