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?

DNF

I don't want to say this book is bad, but it's pretty bad. I have a ton of respect for Alex Garland as a screenwriter (28 Days Later, Never Let Me Go) and director (Ex Machina, Men). I consider him one of the most creative filmmakers of our time. But this was not an enjoyable read. He deserves a ton of credit for being ambitious and for writing a complicated novel. But I couldn't finish to see how it resolved. I didn't love the book from the start. The only interesting plot for me was Sean, in the hotel, trying to fight his way out. And even THAT plot didn't make a lot of sense to me. Why was Sean locked in the room? Why didn't he just leave? Did he have amnesia, because it sometimes felt that way. Why did they come to his hotel room to kill him without considering the fact he might have a gun? So many unanswerable questions. Maybe some of those answers were actually in the text but I wouldn't know because I had a tough time following.

Alex Garland continues to be an intriguing author and I'm open to reading n  The Beachn or n  The Coman and VERY open to watching any movie he puts out. (Civil War, anyone!?! LFG!!!) But this book felt like a trainwreck from start to finish. =/

Several stories combine but none are particularly good. I did like the description of what a tesseract is although it didn't really relate to the story. Story is set in Luzon - Phillipines, Manila area although no areas people may have visited is identified

This was a lot more interesting than I'd expected. I thought it was going to be grim, gory, with some Hemingway machismo and a bit of poverty tourism. It's actually far more intelligent than that, experimenting with story techniques, particularly chronology and points of view, but not in an obscure, detracting way. It's very readable and clear. The characters and settings are all well formed. The philosophical questions are asked very softly and subtly.