I found the first third a bit offputting but once I was past that I was glad I stuck with it as it became a real pageturner, making me stay up ttoo late to finish it!

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.

This book started out very interesting however right around the point the book changed story lines it became far less so. The book kind of tried to weave a number of different stories together so they all tied in together but unfortunately they were all fairly blasé stories wrapped around a mildly interesting beginning.

This was a really great book to read, but strangely I felt the first two thirds were so much better than the last third. I suppose I like an ending that IS an ending, and felt that I was left in limbo about quite a few of the storylines, hence only 4 stars.

Alex Garland may be one of the best current authors I have read. I read The Beach twice, and the second time was just as good as the first. The Tesseract takes place in the Philippines. Garland tells three separate stories about life there, and brings them together in the end. Its a little complicated if you don't pay attention closely, but all the more reason to go back and read it again later! If you liked The Beach, this is much different and maybe doesn't have quite the climatic ending, but it is just as good.

Despite the fact that almost nothing good happens to any of the characters in the book, I really enjoyed reading "The Tesseract." The intertwined narratives of the mafia, family, street kids, and psychologist aren't exactly subtle, but each one had something powerful. Sometimes all the elements lost a little of that power as Alex Garland pushed them together into one conclusion. However, overall I definitely liked this book and, as it was the first of Garland's that I've read, I'll have to seek out some of his other novels.

After reading the beach 20+ years ago and immediately started planning a trip to Thailand that would change the course of my life forever I was very excited to read the tesseract. The excitement didn't last long and I didn't get very far with it. Found my copy the other day and decided to give it another go, thoroughly enjoyed it this time round finishing it in 4 or 5 sittings. I read another review where it is likened to pulp fiction which is an excellent analysis.

What a poorly written and incoherent wannabe thriller. This is a very forgettable novel filled with characters you won't care that are interconnected in ways that don't matter. I didn't have mediocre expectations to begin with and just how bad this was honestly surprised me. I loved Garland's debut novel, The Beach. Some of you may even remember that bad movie that was based on it staring Leo DiCaprio in the late 90s. This novel just tries way to hard to be clever with it's interweaving of characters, which just comes out disjointed as well as the forced immediacy of fast paced, action scenes that just don't work. All but one of the characters are unlikable or too vague for you to form an opinion. Even now, just hours after finishing the book, I can hardly tell you what the plot even was, I'm not even entirely sure there truly was one. 2/5

I kind of see what Alex Garland was trying to do - create this Magnolia-type everything-is-connected story. But none of the individual stories were especially interesting themselves, a lot of the tension seemed quite manufactured, and, despite finding this technique good in 'The Beach', I found the short chapters really frustrating as nothing ever seemed to conclude.

Read like a screenplay, with a drab first few scenes. Once I picked it back up and got to the second part, I enjoyed reading about Rosa, Corazon and Lito and later about the street kid Cente. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

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

This was ok. Some parts were better than others. I skimmed most of thes tory with the last two guys because I wanted to find out what happened with Rosie and the kids. I still don't understand about Lito and the acid and Raphael though.