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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What prompts Laura's fury?
(a) Dan secretly laughing at Laura's efforts.
(b) Dan being off-hand with Richie.
(c) Dan being unable to blow out the candles.
(d) Dan's spittle on the cake.

2. What is the devil Virginia refers to?
(a) The man with the satchell.
(b) Her madness.
(c) Her writer's block.
(d) Nelly.

3. What does the unusual light in Richard's apartment reveal?
(a) That he really needs to fire his cleaning lady.
(b) His astonishing taste in art.
(c) The flaws and smallness of his life's detritus.
(d) The way the illness has ravaged his face and body.

4. What is unusual about Clarissa and Sally?
(a) One is an artist and the other is a stock-broker.
(b) They are a couple who never fight.
(c) They dislike each other, but stay together in order not to lose face.
(d) Their relationship has laster twenty-seven years.

5. How has Laura set the table?
(a) With a serviceable oilcloth.
(b) With a set of white place-mats.
(c) With a batik cloth she bought in Bali.
(d) With a starched white cloth.

6. How does this chapter begin?
(a) With the ordinary routines and rituals of going to bed.
(b) With Richie having a nightmare.
(c) With a cynical comment on married life.
(d) With Laura feeling ashamed.

7. How much of her book has Laura now read?
(a) All of it.
(b) Half of it.
(c) Three quarters of it.
(d) More than a third of it.

8. What is Clarissa nervous about?
(a) The tic that always manifests itself if she is under stress.
(b) The way her new lipstick will make her look.
(c) Whther or not Julia likes green tea and sugared ginger.
(d) The way she ought to frame her comments to Julia.

9. What is disturbing about Virginia kissing Vanessa?
(a) It is not quite innocent.
(b) It is done behind Leonard's back.
(c) It is done behind Nelly's back.
(d) It happens on the train to London.

10. Why can't Laura take the sleeping pills?
(a) They are past use-by date.
(b) She is pregnant.
(c) They are too strong.
(d) She feels guilty.

11. When she has to choose, what does Laura do?
(a) She drives into Los Angeles.
(b) She heads off back the way she came.
(c) She drives to Pasadena.
(d) She drives along the Pasadena Freeway.

12. What does Laura feel herself to be?
(a) Airy: like a wandering wisp of wind.
(b) Loving and dutiful.
(c) Ghostlike: a presence that perceives.
(d) Ungrateful and guilty.

13. What makes Richie frown in concentration?
(a) Trying to make out the letters on the cake.
(b) Trying not to spill crumbs as he eats the birthday cake.
(c) The job of removing the candles from the cake.
(d) Making a wish as the birthday candles burn.

14. What is implied about Richmond station's yellow wooden benches?
(a) They are necessary and appreciated by travelers.
(b) They are comfortable.
(c) They are hard.
(d) They are attractive.

15. What do Virginia and Vanessa do behind Nelly's back?
(a) Kiss.
(b) Squabble.
(c) Eat sugared ginger.
(d) Eat digestive biscuits.

Short Answer Questions

1. What surprises Sally about Oliver?

2. What do both Clarissa and Louis notice about each other?

3. What does Laura remember being sold in novelty shops?

4. What does Richard call death?

5. From the description at the beginning of this chapter, what would be a good word to use to describe Walter Hardy's expression?

(see the answer keys)

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