Update, May 2020: many universities are now no longer requiring the almost useless SAT or ACT for admission to universities, a hopeful trend to hopefully begin to dismantle the billion dollar standardized test industry.So, did Alejandro Zambra actually create a novel in the form of a standardized test?!A) Yes, he sure did, modeled on the Chilean Academic Aptitude Test which he himself took in 1993, with 90 multiple choice questions, some of them based on stories included in the testB) No, I’m ki...

Did you have 'Test Anxiety' when you were in school? A Yes B No C Sometimes D AlwaysThis teeny-weeny book could take an hour to read --- or weeks. Your choice. You might feel a little intimidated by this tiny pale blue fiction-nonfiction-poetry-all of the of the above-none of the above, book, by Chilean author Alejandro Zamora. Or....You might settle in -and have an awesome and amazing time. Your choice.If you hated taking multiple-choice tests in school, you have a chance to experience taking

A magnificent collision between Dadaism & literature. A radical experiment that depicts a solemn reality behind much artifice & minutiae. It is risky. Overall: one great find for me at the Denver Public Library! (as per usual)

My first Zambra, other than an interview I translated last year. Quick, clever, painless, joyful, melancholic, unpredictable, clear, cool, refreshing, effervescent -- and therefore like refrigerated lemon-lime seltzer, I guess. At worst felt like a little collection of stories padded by a great formal gimmick, one that I feel like I've seen before (maybe in Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, "Found" Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts) but I can't remember;...

This work is all kinds of novel. Chilean novelist Zambra really puts us through our paces by making us actually participate in the process of his fiction. He gives us choices on how to finish his sentences. He starts simply enough, asking us to decide which word has no relation to the words given. The structure of the book copies the Verbal section of the Chilean Academic Aptitude Test, required of all applicants to university in Chile. Our minds race with the possibilities he’s given us, and we...

During my life, through school, University and then Professional qualifications I have taken many exams and would consider myself something of a connoisseur of the form – across a spectrum which culminates in the mental, physical and intellectual ordeal of the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos to in my view the rather banal existence of the multiple choice test, a form which I always considered as rather intellectually lazy and more designed for the convenience of the examiners and to introduce stan...

Very clever indeed! It was a super fast read, although highly enjoyable. I especially love the silent stance the author is taking with the absurdity of (some? all?) standardized testing.

Clever, poetic and strangely touching: Alejandro Zambras' novel in the form of a multiple-choice test exposes the absurdity of stupid admission tests and confronts the participating reader with moral conflicts. “You’ll do well on the test, very well, don’t worry—you weren’t educated, you were trained.” Alejandro Zambra takes a contemporary form of evaluation as a model: the "Prueba de Selección Universitaria" (PSU), introduced in Chile in 1967. The structure of the book follows, so the prelimi...

Unusually for me I won't write a detailed review of this one as everything has been said so much better by reviews from goodreads friends (and yes I know that doesn't normally stop me).The question is whether my views on the book are best reflected by:a) Doug's review which points out that this, in an English original, would be a classic Goldsmiths Prize book. Albeit I'm not sure Doug means this as a compliment given his view of the 2016 winner.b) Tony Messenger's brilliant review which, as in D...

If this were graded, I doubt I would receive better than a C-. Presented in test format, I found this to be too much work and often confusing. This could be a brilliant stylistic choice but I tired of it quickly. 2.5 stars

What if one’s life could be summed up by taking a test? ¿Que?You know, like your parents’ divorce and how it effected you. Would you prefer the parrot? Or the dog? Both? Neither?Your education, good, bad, indifferent. Can twin lawyers beat the system? And which is the more corrupt of the two? How much do bus driver’s make? So many career paths.Relationships, love, sex, divorce. One thing leads to another. Do you choose one, all or none of the above? Remember that Chile was one of the last countr...

Multiple Choice is a one-of-a-kind read in the best possible way. Chilean author Alejandro Zambra innovatively styled his new book after the Chilean Academic Aptitude Test which students took every December from 1967 to 2003 if they planned to apply to college in Chile. Specifically, he chose the Verbal Aptitude section as he took it in 1993 which consisted of ninety multiple choice questions contained in five sections. While each section of the book was fantastic in its own right, my favorites

I agree with those who label this little book as pretentious, but I guess I don’t mind pretentious as long the author:a) Has something interesting to sayb) Says what he has to say in an interesting wayc) Is interested in transmitting something beyond what he is sayingd) Is not interested in how what is saying will come acrosse) All of the aboveI read this in one breath and will need a second read to exhale it now. If the Russians were born drunk, and the French were born perverted, then the Sout...

Tried very hard to see the “poetry” in this book, but I just couldn’t get past the gimmicky feel of the whole thing. A novel written as a multiple choice test. Cool, I guess. For three or four pages. Then it got a bit old. Which is a shame, because Zambra was starting to grab my attention with the last 25 or so pages and the longer, reading-comprehension questions. There was a “question” that was a love letter to his son (or the narrator’s son, I suppose) and it had me deep in thought – beautifu...

This a strange, little book, that is the least you can say about this booklet. The Chilean writer Zambra seems to give a duplicate (a ‘facsimile’) of the test that you had to take in his country at the end of high school, and which determined which studies you could proceed. His book starts fairly simple (or at least you think so) with a few classic multiple-choice questions (such as: “which term does not belong in this list?” Or “put the sentences in the correct order”), but gradually he builds...

I absolutely adore Zambra’s work. He’s wildly inventive, never more so than with this novel, which invites readers to respond to thought-provoking, multiple choice questions, and to read short paragraphs, which illuminate his feelings on love, life, and family. Zambra is a gem, and I highly recommend checking out his backlist titles, too. His books are tiny treasures.Backlist bump: My Documents by Alejandro Zambra (Author), Megan McDowell (Translator)Tune in to our weekly podcast dedicated to al...

i'm not overly fond of gimmicks in my fiction (or anywhere else for that matter). having read only a single zambra book previously (bonsai, which left me, admittedly, lukewarm), i thought it altogether likely that this would solidify for me an enduring disinclination to seek out anything further from the chilean author/poet. but it didn't. and, despite myself, i enjoyed multiple choice (facsímil) far more than i thought i would (i anticipated a lazy man's oulipo).based structurally on the chilea...

Multiple Choice is one of the most unique reads I've sat through in awhile. Initially, I was drawn to the text due to its unique format, and because I was intrigued that a book would be written like an aptitude test. I'll be honest, at first, I was perplexed by Zambra. I was worried that the book would be mainly word connections and relations (the first third of the book) but then the novel takes a different turn, and the reader is given short passages that resemble short stories. The reading co...

This got increasingly clever and poignant and "laugh out loud" funny and was a memorable way to spend a couple hours taking turns reading each "problem" out loud with a girlfriend I'd missed spending time with on a train last summer between Cologne and Berlin last summer. I'd probably not like it as much if I was reading it alone or silently as it wasn't linear and had such a choppy model. It was a mellow and interesting time with the countryside and villages for scenery and my husband and teena...

This novel is _______?a) Experimental fictionb) Non fictionc) Autobiographyd) Fictione) All of the aboveThe latest work from Alejandro Zambra is structured on ________?a) The Chilean Academic Aptitude Testb) Which was in place between 1967 and 2003c) The need to pass this test to enter Universityd) The Verbal Aptitude test that Zambra took in 1993e) All of the aboveThe work is constructed into five sections. Which is your favourite?a) Excluded Termb) Sentence Orderc) Sentence Completiond) Senten...