The Tesseract
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2.8 • 4 Ratings
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
In the gritty streets of Manila, where danger lurks around every corner, fate intertwines the lives of three disparate groups of individuals.
An intricately woven, suspenseful novel of psychological and political intrigue, The Tesseract follows the interlocking fates of three sets of characters in the Philippines: gangsters in a chase through the streets of Manila; a middle-class mother putting her children to bed in the suburbs and remembering her first love; and a couple of street kids and the wealthy psychiatrist who is studying their dreams.
Secrets unravel as these characters' paths intersect, immersing you in a world of danger, longing, and unexpected connections.
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. FYI: Leonardo DiCaprio will star in the movie version of The Beach.
