Tonight, these disparate lives will collide in a shattering finale. My impression of him was of an articulate man with intensity and a determination to make the very best of his craft. Shamefully, the latter is probably more famous now for its re-invention as a Leonardo DiCaprio led film. However, the book that many of us remember was a great thriller and a compulsive page-turner but slightly flawed. What Garland has produced in The Tesseract is something more complex and unexpected.
Manila is brought to life in the best way that a city can be in a novel.
I have never been there, but Garland gave me a sense of the heat, the smells and the different paces and facets of life that exist in this one place. All of the characters have their own stories to tell, Sean, Rosa, Don Pepe, his henchmen, the street kids and Alfredo who buys their dreams. Garland is frighteningly talented and a true craftsman of words and the fact that The Tesseract holds together and concludes with such confidence and vigour is proof of the fact.