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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. As which of the following does Malcom refer to the narrator?

2. Which of the following is noted as Amy’s favorite book?

3. Which of the following times does Fife report his flight from Richmond to Washington actually taking?

4. Which of the following makes of car does Fife take before leaving for Vermont?

5. Which of the following does Fife note having worked to expose throughout his filmmaking career?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why does Fife tell Emma he has to confess to her in front of witnesses rather than in private?

2. What reasons do the Chapmans give for offering Fife a business position?

3. What reason does Fife give to Amy for not having previously told her about his past?

4. What reasons does Fife note for feeling sorry for Diana?

5. What reasons does Emma give to try to persuade Fife that giving the interview is unwise?

6. What advice does Emma have for Malcolm concerning the lucidity of Fife’s narration?

7. Who, per Fife, is Howard Levy, and why is he imprisoned?

8. What reasons does Alicia give in favor of Fife accepting the Chapmans’ offer?

9. What distinction does the novel make between immigrants and refugees?

10. After what does Fife pattern his appearance while living with the Chapmans?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Throughout the novel, there is a dearth of quotation marks used to indicate what words are speech. What is typically used, instead, and how? What effect does the difference have on the reading? How does the effect manifest?

Essay Topic 2

Consider the following passage:

He likes the mingled odor of cigarettes and sweat and minty shampoo. He can’t catch the scent of much, but he can smell her. Young women, their scent is different and better than that of middle-aged and older women. It’s as if desire and longing for desire have distinct and different odors. When Emma leans down in the morning to kiss his cheek before leaving for their production company office downtown, he inhales the smell of English breakfast tea and unscented soap. The odor of a longing for desire. This young woman, Sloan, she smells of desire itself (7-8).

What tone does the passage convey? How does it do so?

Essay Topic 3

Consider the following passage:

There’s no such thing as the end of childhood, [Fife] says to Emma. It’s only innocence—infancy—that actually comes to an end. That’s when childhood begins, and childhood is a region, not a marker. And it is vast and extends even into old age and death. It’s like a coastal marsh between the land and the sea, he explains. It’s a zone of dwarfed trees and mudflats and estuaries, where waters flow back and forth in opposite directions following the pitch and fall of the land and the phases of the moon and the shifting patterns of the winds. (179)

Do your experience and observation support Fife’s assertion about the nature of childhood? How or how not?

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