The Test

Award-winning author Sylvain Neuvel explores an immigration dystopia in The Test.

Britain, the not-too-distant future.
Idir is sitting the British Citizenship Test.
He wants his family to belong.

Twenty-five questions to determine their fate.
Twenty-five chances to impress.
When the test takes an unexpected and tragic turn, Idir is handed the power of life and death.
How do you value a life when all you have is multiple choice?

ARC provided by the publisher for an honest review.

I want to thank both Tor.com and Shari for this ARC! She had an extra copy so she sent it my way and OH MAN. I am SO GLAD that when she offered, I said yes. I haven’t read much short fiction, but I will definitely be getting into it more this year.

This novella is the story of Idir, an immigrant who is taking the British Citizenship Test that will determine whether he and his family become citizens. The test in front of him consists of 25 questions – a mere 25 questions to determine if they are citizen quality. Almost at the very beginning of the test, there is an unexpected and deadly interruption, and Idir’s choices are no longer simple test answers – they are choices that make the difference between life and death for those around him.

I was drawn in to the story from the very beginning, due to the format and the narration. In the beginning, the story is formatted as answers to each of the questions from the test, and we get Idir’s answers in the form of his inner monologue. In this way, we get to see the answer he writes down but how the questions conjure up different memories or aspects of his life. I thought it was the perfect way to get to know the main character in a short amount of time, which I imagine can be difficult in novellas.

Once we get to the interruption of the test, we have a different POV introduced that I don’t want to say too much about since I think it’s better if you go into the story not knowing too much about the plot other than what I’ve already mentioned. I will say that this POV made the story infinitely more interesting, and introduced more of the world that Idir is living in. The jumps between POVs add depth to the world and to the story throughout the entire course of the novella.

I think the pacing of The Test was perfect. It was fast paced enough to keep me reading (I actually read it in one sitting) but not too fast that it felt overwhelming.

I think the story is perfectly suited to this shorter format. As much as I loved it, I don’t think it would work as well in a longer novel format. The intensity of the story is better delivered as this short punch, and would have lost its effect in a longer format.

The novella brings up a lot of ideas about the choices we make, how to value a human life, the idea that there can always be a correct choice in a particular situation. It was very dark and almost scary to read as a potential vision of the future. It reminds me a bit of how George Orwell was imagining a wildly dystopian future in his novel 1984.

If you have ever seen Black Mirror (the Netflix tv show), I have heard a lot of people compare this novella to a Black Mirror episode. I haven’t watched the show myself, but from what I hear that is a very accurate comparison.

I hope you all will pick this up when it’s released on February 12th! (the ebook version – I think the paperback version will be released later). If you do, let me know what you think. And if you have recommendations for other short fiction, or other great scifi, please let me know 🙂