Multiple Choice
Page 1
ACCLAIM FOR ALEJANDRO ZAMBRA
My Documents
Named one of the Best Books of 2015 by The Boston Globe
A New York Times Editors’ Choice
Finalist for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award
“All of [Zambra’s books] are very short and strikingly original. . . . In his new book, Zambra returns to the twin sources of his talent—to his storytelling vitality, that living tree which blossoms often in these pages, and to his unsparing examination of recent Chilean history.”
—James Wood, The New Yorker
“Zambra’s books have long shown him to be a writer who, at the sentence level, is in a world all his own. . . . Let us now forget the smallness of simply spearheading a new Latin American fiction. My Documents goes beyond that, brighter than most anything we’d call exceptional, yesterday or today and in any language.”
—NPR
“This dynamite collection of stories has it all—Chile and Belgium, exile and homecomings, Pinochet and Simon and Garfunkel—but what I love most about the tales is their strangeness, their intelligence, and their splendid honesty.”
—Junot Díaz, NewYorker.com
“Zambra knows how to turn the familiar inside out, but he also knows how to wrap us up in it. His generous stories satisfy our demand for narrative even as they question it.”
—Natasha Wimmer, The New York Times Book Review
“[A] dazzlingly funny and playful collection.”
—John Freeman, The Boston Globe
“Sentence-by-sentence pleasure . . . [Zambra’s] most substantial achieve-ment yet.”
—The Seattle Times
“Much like Junot Díaz’s Drown, the stories in Chilean author Zambra’s collection are discrete tales that blend together with an impressive fluidity. . . . Through eleven stories, the author’s charming cast examines religion, soccer, relationships, and the lure of solitude—all from a distinctly Chilean perspective. But the view is also a youthful one, neatly capturing the puzzling process of trying to figure out who you really are. A–”
—Entertainment Weekly
“Compulsive . . . rich and thought-provoking . . . If you are going to read Zambra, which you should, don’t just read My Documents: read everything he’s done.”
—The Guardian (London)
“Zambra’s sentences comically dance around narrative convention without disrupting the immersive pull of the story. I can think of no one else who does this, and the effect is spellbinding. . . . His fiction is, quite simply, some of the best being produced today.”
—Matt Kessler, The Rumpus
“Zambra is so alert to the intimate beauty and mystery of being alive that in his hands a raindrop would feel as wide as a world.”
—Anthony Marra, author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
“My Documents is an act of literary levitation—luminous, magical, and profound, written with the mysterious quality of weightlessness.”
—Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins
“Zambra is one of my favorite living writers. He brings such clarity, exactitude, compassion, oddity, and inventiveness to his books that every new volume he publishes goes on my read-this-immediately list.”
—Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Brief History of the Dead
Ways of Going Home
“[Alejandro Zambra’s novels] are written with startling talent. And Zambra’s latest novel represents, I think, his deepest achievement. . . . The best conjuring trick is the one where you’re shown how it’s done, which in no way contradicts your belief that what you’ve seen is magic.”
—Adam Thirlwell, The New York Times Book Review
“In many ways, [this] book recalls the miniature roominess Philip Roth achieved in his great novel, The Ghost Writer. The stories we tell imagine us as much as us them, Zambra reminds, with the power and intensity of a writer who grew up in the shadow of a terrible war.”
—The Boston Globe
“Funny, contemplative, and quietly moving, Ways of Going Home pulls off the intoxicating trick of making the world feel smaller in its familiar touchstones found in a time of unique tragedy.”
—Los Angeles Times
“Complex yet sophisticated, [Ways of Going Home] places Zambra at the spearhead of a new Chilean fiction and sets him alongside other Latin American writers such as Colombia’s Juan Gabriel Vásquez, who weave some of the continent’s most difficult historical themes into an exciting modern art form.”
—The Guardian (London)
“I envy Alejandro the obvious sophistication and exquisite beauty of the pages you are about to read, a work which is filled with the heartfelt vulnerability of testimony. I loved it and I read it with the great joy of anticipation that one has reading a writer one hopes to read more and more of in the future.”
—Edwidge Danticat, Granta
“I read all of Alejandro Zambra’s novels back-to-back because they were such good company. His books are like a phone call in the middle of the night from an old friend, and afterward, I missed the charming and funny voice on the other end, with its strange and beautiful stories.”
—Nicole Krauss, author of Great House
PENGUIN BOOKS
MULTIPLE CHOICE
Alejandro Zambra is the author of the story collection My Documents, which was a finalist for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and three previous novels: Ways of Going Home, The Private Lives of Trees, and Bonsai. His books have been translated into more than ten languages. He has received numerous prizes in Chile, including the Chilean Literary Critics’ Award in 2007 and the National Book Council’s award for best novel in 2007 and 2012, as well as international distinctions such as the Prince Claus Award in Holland. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Harper’s, Tin House, and McSweeney’s, among others. In 2010, he was named one of Granta’s Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists. A 2015–2016 Cullman Center fellow at the New York Public Library, he divides his time between New York and Santiago, Chile.
Megan McDowell is a Spanish language literary translator from Richmond, Kentucky. With the exception of Bonsai, she has translated all of Zambra’s books. She lives in Santiago, Chile.
ALSO BY ALEJANDRO ZAMBRA
Bonsai
The Private Lives of Trees
Ways of Going Home
My Documents
PENGUIN BOOKS
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street
New York, New York 10014
penguin.com
Copyright © 2014 by Alejandro Zambra
Translation copyright © 2016 by Megan McDowell
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
Originally published in Spanish as Facsimil by Editorial Huerders, Santiago de Chile.
A selection from this book appeared in The New Yorker under the title “Reading Comprehension: Test No. 1.”
ISBN 9781101992173
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Cover design: Nayon Cho
Version_1
For my teachers Juan Luis Morales Rojas, Elizabeth Azócar, Ricardo Ferrada, and Soledad Bianchi
CONTENTS
Acclaim for Alejandro Zambra
About the Author
Also by Alejandro Zambra
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
I. Excluded Term
II. Sentence Order
III. Sentence Completion
IV. Sentence Elimination
V. Reading Comprehension
I. EXCLUDED TERM
In exercises 1 through 24, mark the answer that corresponds to the word whose meaning has no relation to either the heading or the other words listed.
1. MULTIPLE
A) manifold
B) numerous
C) untold
D) five
E) two
2. CHOICE
A) voice
B) one
C) decision
D) preference
E) alternative
3. YOURS
A) hers
B) his
C) mine
D) their
E) ours
4. FIVE
A) six
B) seven
C) eight
D) nine
E) one
5. BLINK
A) sweat
B) nod
C) cough
D) cry
E) bite
6. BODY
A) dust
B) ashes
C) dirt
D) grit
E) smut
7. MASK
A) disguise
B) veil
C) hood
D) face
E) confront
8. BEAR
A) endure
B) tolerate
C) abide
D) panda
E) kangaroo
9. TEACH
A) preach
B) control
C) educate
D) initiate
E) screech
10. COPY
A) cut
B) paste
C) cut
D) paste
E) undo
11. LETTER
A) uppercase
B) lowercase
C) cursive
D) dead
E) silent
12. CUT
A) erase
B) annul
C) blot
D) expunge
E) wound
13. HEARTBREAKING
A) breathtaking
B) earthshaking
C) lovemaking
D) forsaking
E) mistaking
14. BLACKLIST
A) backlist
B) checklist
C) playlist
D) shitlist
E) novelist
15. CHILDHOOD
A) childlike
B) childproof
C) childcare
D) childless
E) childfree
16. PROTECT
A) care for
B) cover for
C) dote on
D) watch over
E) look after
17. PROMISE
A) complete
B) silence
C) promise
D) complete
E) silence
18. PRAY
A) please
B) praise
C) prey
D) prays
E) pleas
19. BLACKOUT
A) whiteout
B) pitch-black
C) lights-out
D) nightfall
E) dead of night
20. RAZE
A) flatten
B) raise
C) level
D) demolish
E) subdue
21. SPARE
A) time
B) room
C) change
D) tire
E) life
22. PAUSE
A) hesitation
B) recess
C) break
D) breath
E) silence
23. SILENCE
A) fidelity
B) complicity
C) loyalty
D) conspiracy
E) cowardice
24. SILENCE
A) silence
B) silence
C) silence
D) silence
E) silence
II. SENTENCE ORDER
In exercises 25 through 36, mark the answer that puts the sentences in the best possible order to form a coherent text.
25. Nineteen eighty-something
1. Your father argued with your mother.
2. Your mother argued with your brother.
3. Your brother argued with your father.
4. It was almost always cold.
5. That is all you remember.
A) 2 – 3 – 1 – 4 – 5
B) 3 – 1 – 2 – 4 – 5
C) 4 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 5
D) 4 – 5 – 1 – 2 – 3
E) 5 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4
26. The second
1. You try to remember your first Communion.
2. You try to remember your first masturbation.
3. You try to remember the first time you had sex.
4. You try to remember the first death in your life.
5. And the second.
A) 1 – 5 – 2 – 3 – 4
B) 1 – 2 – 5 – 3 – 4
C) 1 – 2 – 3 – 5 – 4
D) 4 – 5 – 1 – 2 – 3
E) 4 – 3 – 2 – 1 – 5
27. A child
1. You dream that you lose a child.
2. You wake up.
3. You cry.
4. You lose a child.
5. You cry.
A) 1 – 2 – 4 – 3 – 5
B) 1 – 2 – 3 – 5 – 4
C) 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 1
D) 3 – 4 – 5 – 1 – 2
E) 4 – 5 – 3 – 1 – 2
28. Your house
1. It belongs to a bank, but you prefer to think of it as yours.
2. If all goes well, you’ll finish paying for it in 2033.
3. You’ve lived here for eleven years. First with a family, and later on with some ghosts who ended up leaving, too.
4. You don’t like the neighborhood. There are no parks nearby and the air is dirty.
5. But you love this house. You’ll never leave it.
A) 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 1
B) 3 – 4 – 5 – 1 – 2
C) 4 – 5 – 1 – 2 – 3
D) 3 – 1 – 2 – 4 – 5
E) 1 – 2 – 4 – 3 – 5
29. Birthday
1. You wake up early, go for a walk, look for a café.
2. It’s your birthday, but you don’t remember.
3. You feel like you are forgetting something, but it’s only a sense of unease, an intuition that something is out of place.
4. You go about your routine, like any other Saturday.
5. You smoke, turn on the TV, fall asleep listening to the midnight news.
A) 5 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4
B) 4 – 5 – 1 – 2 – 3
C) 3 – 4 – 5 – 1 – 2
D) 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 1
E) 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5
30. Two hundred twenty-three
1. You
remember the freckles on her breasts, on her legs, on her belly, on her ass. The exact number: two hundred twenty-three. One thousand two hundred and seven days ago there were two hundred twenty-three.
2. You reread the messages she used to send you: They are beautiful, funny. Long paragraphs, vivid, complex sentences. Warm words. She writes better than you do.
3. You remember the time you drove five hours just to see her for ten minutes. It wasn’t ten minutes, it was the whole afternoon, but you like to think it was only ten minutes.
4. You remember the waves, the rocks. Her sandals, a wound on her foot. You remember your eyes darting from her thighs to her eyelashes.
5. You never got used to being with her. You never got used to being without her. You remember when she said, in a whisper, as if to herself: Everything is OK.
A) 5 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4
B) 4 – 5 – 1 – 2 – 3
C) 3 – 4 – 5 – 1 – 2
D) 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 1
E) 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5
31. Relatives
1. You group them into two lists: the ones you love and the ones you don’t.
2. You group them into two lists: the ones who shouldn’t be alive and the ones who shouldn’t be dead.
3. You group them according to the degree of trust they inspired in you as a child.
4. For a moment you think you discover something important, something that has been weighing on you for years.
5. You group them into two lists: the living and the dead.
A) 1 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 2
B) 5 – 2 – 1 – 3 – 4
C) 1 – 3 – 5 – 2 – 4
D) 3 – 4 – 5 – 2 – 1
E) 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5
32. A kick in the balls
1. You think of all the people, living or dead, near or far, men or women, from your country or abroad, who have reason to kick you in the balls.
2. You wonder if you deserve a kick in the balls.
3. You wonder if you deserve to be hated. You wonder if anyone really hates you.
4. You wonder if you hate anyone. You wonder if you hate the people who hate you.