Bookslut writes today about Alex Garland’s new book The Coma and says:
It wasn’t too long ago that Alex Garland was the subject of all of those “Where’s that follow-up novel?” stories. But then he wrote the screenplay for 28 Days Later and now his new book The Coma is coming out. The Coma contains woodcuts by his father.
If my memory serves me correctly, Alex Garland did in fact have another novel after the wonderful The Beach. It was called The Tesseract and it sucked. If you check out the Amazon page, the reviews are excellent, but I put it down half way through. I liked The Beach, but I imagine it might not be as good if I reread it now. I think it’s very dated, but that’s just my opinon. Plus everyone seems to call it Generation X’s first great book, which I resent immediately of course. I think The Tesseract did not sell as well nearly as well because it was an inferior book and now everyone seems to be pretending it never happened. If only we could do that with the Garfield movie. (If you really want to giggle, read the review of the travesty by the NYT.)
Bookdwarf 
“The Beach” may be well-plotted (and, in my opinion, more revealing of its generation than Bret Easton Ellis’s “Less than Zero” was before) and metaphorical, but it lacks the intensity, sharp prose and jigsaw-like structure of the admittedly muddled “The Tesseract.” I think people fond of “The Tesseract” are more devoted to experimental fiction. It read to me like Faulkneresque perspective meshed with the pop novel — for me, a truly fascinating hodgepodge for anyone to attempt. Plus, if we look at the “Quiet American”/”Lord of the Flies” antecedents of “The Beach,” then one can make the case that “The Tesseract,” whatever its trappings, comes from a purer, audacious and perhaps more original plinth. Certainly the book is hardly the sophomore slump that “The Little Friend” was.
All I am saying is give “Tesseract” a chance.
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Hmm, maybe I am wrong about ‘The Tesseract’. I admit I read ‘The Beach’years ago, but I think I was entranced with the idea of disappearing on an island in Thailand. It is a very ‘just out of college’ book. I might have to give it a second chance. And I could not make it all the way throguh Donna Tartt’s second book. I love a long book, believe me. But I was bored for some reason. It just didn’t grab my attention.
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