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Another incredible novel from Garland!
Good Work but I wont give it All my stars.
Gimmicky
Two stars is a bit generous, but...
Starts well, ends not so good

The Tesseract
Alex Garland
Manufacturer: Riverhead Trade
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Beach
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ASIN: 1573227749
Release Date: 2000-01-10

Amazon.com

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

Book Description

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

Customer Reviews:

Another incredible novel from Garland!.......2007-04-14

Think Quentin Tarantino movies. Now picture that in written form. Garland takes three individual stories and allows them to run their natural course, eventually overlapping with one another through brilliant twists pulled off by the author Alex Garland. If you have read his first novel, The Beach (much better than the movie) then you are already familiar with his writing expertise. He grabs your attention from the very first page, and doesn't let go until the last sentence of the novel. I would also suggest looking into the meaning of "Tesseract" which is quite an interesting concept in itself. Somehow Garland manages to take seemingly unrelated stories and intertwine them with ease. A must read!

Good Work but I wont give it All my stars........2006-08-06

Reading 'The Beach' (also by Garland) was what made me get The Tesseract. Being a fan of Southeast Asian set novels, and knowing that Garland is a master of the "Backpacker's Culture", I knew from the start that The Tesseract will not disappoint.

This book is no beach culture.It is set in the heart of Manila, in a seedy hotel along Roxas Boulevard. Garland describes the smallest of details of Manila with the precision expected only from one who has lived in Manila itself.

While The Beach has both its plot/climax and raw narration to offer, The Tesseract's gem is its fast but just right rhythm, and the way it unfolds how the characters of 3 separate 'stories' are interrelated, hence the title 'The Tesseract'. Take six cubes and arrange them into the shape of a crucifix, at the point where the cross is made. Thats the tesseract.

Sean the English seaman and Don Pepe, the aristocratic mestizo. Corazon, Rosa and her children. Rosa and Lito. Totoy and Vicente. All of their stories are presented independently but in the end they all climax in a common joint.

I also liked particularly how Garland personified Don Pepe, (a Spanish mestizo with assistant thugs). The author even knows the concept (and the word) of "sip-sip"--an irritating trait in the Philippine Society. This Don, who also has the mindset of most elite Filipinos, cannot seem to get enough of the irritating habit of uselessly comparing the Philippines to the countries theyve been to.

Its also pleasing to know that although Garland also touched on the provincial life in Infanta, Quezon, he didnt stick to the usual Maria Clara stereotype that most foreign authors, and even Filipino authors cast on the female characters.

I found out that there's been a movie adaptation produced, the movie altered a whole lot of details. It was set in Bangkok (maybe Manila wasnt exotic enough or marketable enough?), and a female assasin character (not present in the book) was wedged in...perhaps to add a sex factor to it.
Directed by some dude named Oxide Pang. That's what you get for tampering with a fantastic novel. A B-grade "Chuck Norris" type of film.

Gimmicky.......2005-08-07

While the writer is a thinker and talented, I found the novel a downer, and felt disappointed. After reading it, I had no sense of having learned anything, except perhaps the meaning of the word tesseract. There were so many directions that could have proved fruitful, had the author chosen to explore them, but he didn't. He chose to go for the gimmick, and to write a story that was itself an illustration of a tesseract. That's the problem I have with the book. Like the movie, "The Usual Suspects", there is a gimmick. And like screenwriting, he works from the outside in, instead of from the inside out. This is a movie, it's not a novel, in that respect.

People may enjoy it as a movie, but I didn't enjoy it as a novel. However, the writing is good, and the execution is excellent. It can't be faulted in any literary sense. Just not my cup of tea.

Michael P. Sakowski
Author "The Enterprise Zone"

Two stars is a bit generous, but..........2005-01-07

I really wanted to like The Tesseract, and I couldn't have been more excited when it was released. The Beach is one of my favorite novels (if not my absolute favorite), so I fought through The Tesseract, waiting and hoping it would get interesting, but I made it to the last page and just thought, "what a waist of my time this read was." Again, I really did want to like it, and I understand what Mr. Garland was trying to accomplish with the whole "Tesseract" thing, but a decent storyline was lost in the process. Basically, I felt it didn't flow well, the characters as well as the stories were not interesting enough, and the ending was not worth the journey. Unfortunately, though Mr. Garland has written one of my favorite novels, he has also written one of my least favorite novels. I gave The Tesseract 2 stars because I have faith in Alex Garland as a writer and still look forward to reading his other works.

Starts well, ends not so good.......2004-11-23

After "The beach" the eyes of the world turned to Alex Garland, waiting to see what he was going to write next. It was "The tesseract". A story divided into three segments, seemingly unrelated, but that are obviously sewn together in the end.

The first part is about Sean, a seaman involved with Don Pepe, the mafia boss controling naval traffic through the ports of Manilla. Sean is lying in bed in a deserted, decaying hotel, sweating as he waits for Don Pepe to show up and maybe kill him. This part is very graphic and violent. The second part - the best one in my opinion- is about Rose, a young woman that left her poor village in the Phillipines to become a successful doctor in Manilla. Rose remembers how she found her first love with Lito, a crippled and humble fisherman. The third part, back in Manilla, has Vincente and Totoy, two street kids, as main characters. This part is somewhat boring, slow, and almost ruins the entire book. If the first part has an interesting setting and plot, and the second part has great characters, the third part has nothing much interesting.

But what is the tesseract? The tesseract is a hypercube, something that we cannot see because it's in forth dimension. We can only see an aproximate form, like a 3-d cruciform. That's an analogy to the three stories in the book. We know they relate to each other, they come one on topof the other, we just can't see how. The problem is, when Garland tells us, it is not satisfactory. The final moments of the book could have been more developed.

All in all, "The tesseract" is not in the same league as "The beach". But it is two-thirds of a good reading.

Grade 7.2/10

Average customer rating:

Enraptured by Moonfall
Contains some nice weirdness and thoughts.

Moonfall (Tesseract Book)
Heather Spears
Manufacturer: Tesseract Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 088878306X
Release Date: 2003-01-14

Book Description

Tasman is born into a world populated by two-headed bicephalic "twins" who share one body. Alone, she struggles for acceptance and becomes the unwitting key to the Earth_s salvation, in a poetic and apocalyptic vision of the future where technology exists as a mere remnant of a destroyed world, conjoined twins are the norm and the orbit of the moon is decaying.

Customer Reviews:

Enraptured by Moonfall.......2003-08-26

Heather Spears is a very complicated and disturbing writer, artist and human being. Her "other" career (as an artist) has often been to draw sketches of children in situations of great trauma such as at birth or with facial deformities or the Palestinian children of the Intifada ... maimed, wounded and hospitalized, often fatally. Moonfall is not exactly a book. It is a genre of its own, part poetry, part dream, part science fiction, part prayer ... this small book, first of a trilogy, is an intuitive comment about the direction in which the world is heading. As such it is a remarkable testimony to Spears' com/passionate belief in the ability of humans to care for one another above all else. This is also the book's eloquent message, healing and teaching. Every person in the story except one is a conjoined twin. The characters reveal an empathy and connection with one another which is quite extraordinary, although most fear and reject Tasman, the singleton. Spears' language is metaphor. One almost feels as if one is thinking or feeling the book rather than reading it. But really, to experience Moonfall is to transport yourself to a place beyond words. I highly recommend this book. I found it enrapturing.

Contains some nice weirdness and thoughts........1999-03-21

An unusually creative and strangely unsettling book, Moonfall takes place in a world populated entirely by conjoined twins except for the main character. Spears's perspective of such a sociaty is interesting and the writing is very clear and well done. Although not classic science-fiction, Moonfall is enjoyable and worth reading.

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Blue Apes (Tesseract Books)
Phyllis Gotlieb
Manufacturer: Tesseract Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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ASIN: 1895836131
Release Date: 2002-11-27

Book Description

From the title piece, Blue Apes - a story of discovery, loss and betrayal on a distant planet - to Sunday_s Child- an account of an alien born to human colonists - Phyllis Gotlieb_s short fiction explores issues and passions that are deeply human, even when her characters are not. Gotlieb writes in the American SF tradition from a decidedly Canadian perspective.

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Tesseracts 4 (Tesseracts)

Manufacturer: Tesseract Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0888783221
Release Date: 2002-11-27

Book Description

Tesseracts4 expands the future of speculative fiction in the fourth instalment of this popular anthology of Canadian writers.

Enter worlds where reproductive laws yield a biotechnical marriage of the flesh ... take the stage with a rock 'n' roll band, its fame, fortune and phantom ... prepare for the gift of flight on eagles' wings ... experience the angst of a mother as she searches for her abducted dream child on video ... hand raise a mythical beast in the comfort of your home ... go behind a freakshow cage to meet a philosophical man-faced dog ... charge a truly animalistic sexuality to your credit card.

Tesseracts Nine: New Canadian Speculative Fiction
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Really good stories from Canada

collected contemporary sci-fi and fantasy short stories from Canada

Tesseracts Nine: New Canadian Speculative Fiction

Manufacturer: EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1894063260
Release Date: 2005-09-01

Customer Reviews:

Really good stories from Canada.......2006-07-15

Here is the latest in a yearly collection of speculative fiction stories and poems from north of the border, in Canada.

At an isolated research station in the north, one story concerns talking lemmings who are looking forward to being eaten by other predators. There is a modern-day vampire story. Mother Teresa moves into an elderly woman's home, and turns it into an orphanage. A group of aliens about to terraform Earth are totally enthralled by the singing of an elderly eskimo woman who knows that she has reached the end of her life. There is a near-future computer-controlled war story. A man wakes up one morning to find himself conscious, but physically unable to get out of bed. Then he finds that he has turned invisible. His wife, who thinks that he left her in the middle of the night, goes into a deep depression. Then civil order collapses as thousands, then millions, of people similarly disappear.

There is a wide variety of stories here; something for everyone. Read this an example of the state of speculative fiction in Canada, or read this as simply a group of really good stories. Either way, read it.

collected contemporary sci-fi and fantasy short stories from Canada.......2006-04-02

Seven of the 23 collected pieces have been previously published; the others appear here for the first time. While all the authors are from Canada, in introductory and closing sections, the editors each note that there really is no meaningful or helpful classification of "Canadian speculative fiction." In his foreword, Ryman notes that among the selections in this loosely-defined genre of speculative fiction are science fiction, Christian miracle tales, ones based on pagan themes and content, and others depicting inexplicable events. Hopkinson in her closing section "Final Thoughts" cites the variety of humor--satire, buffoonery, camp, etc.--found in many of the stories. A few of the pieces are short-shorts of only a page or two, a couple in verse; the longest is over 60 pages. Detailed biographical notes on the number of authors at the back lead readers to additional works.

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The Tesseract
Alex Garland
Manufacturer: Penguin Books Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0140258426

Imprisoned in a Tesseract: The Life and Work of James Blish

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Imprisoned in a Tesseract: The Life and Work of James Blish
David Ketterer
Manufacturer: Kent State Univ Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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History & Criticism | Science Fiction | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0873383346

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Tesseract 7

Manufacturer: Tesseract Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Anthologies | Science Fiction | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 189583659X

Book Description

Readers will find both familiar and new names in this latest volume of our annual celebration of the best of Canadian specualtive writing. Again a talented team of editors chosen for their diversity has assembled a stellar line-up of Canadian speculative writers of short fiction and poetry from the anglophone and francophone traditions, and this year we also include a translation from Spanish.

Book Description

Tesseracts8 brings together twenty of the best pieces of Canadian speculative fiction, selected from both established and new, English and French writers by award-winning editors John Clute and Candas Jane Dorsey.

Readers of all types of speculative fiction - science fiction, fantasy, magic realism and horror - will find their flavor in the eighth anthology in the renowned Tesseracts series.

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