The worst thing that could happen to Multiple Choice, a novel by Chilean author Alejandro Zambra (My Documents), is that:
(a) it's called "original," and the faint praise damns a great book to obscurity.
(b) it's called "genius," and the effusive praise damns a good book to obscurity.
(c) it becomes a bestseller, mostly due to the fact that it is thin and looks easy; readers take it home to find its contents challenging and melancholy; and they end up returning it, purchasing a thriller instead.
(d) readers love it, but no one can agree whether it is a story of a father wrestling with his father's legacy in the Pinochet regime, a story of lost love, a critique of bureaucratic homogenization, or a memoir.
(e) readers, unwilling to be challenged, call its form a schtick and tire of it by page four, never discovering what the author might say about how stories are created, where authority lies, the rhetoric of officialdom or what happens to the twins.
(f) it is administered as an actual college entrance exam.
(g) all of the above
(h) c and f
Readers expecting easy answers beware: Multiple Choice offers none. It is a story of a man struggling with intractable problems in love, in family, in politics and in failing to learn from mistakes. As in life, there are only the choices presented, and they don't always make sense; some are patently absurd. That's the joy and zeal of it. This is a book for fans of Kafka and those who delight in mental yoga. --Zak Nelson, writer and editorial consultant