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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. What does the narrator compare the girls-with-bells-for-eyes to?

2. How frequently does the narrator’s boyfriend come over to her house, in "The Husband Stitch"?

3. How does the narrator of "Inventory" say that the virus ended up getting to her home?

4. What noise does Stabler hear, repeatedly, in "Especially Heinous"?

5. How does the narrator of "The Husband Stitch" describe the boy she meets in the beginning of the story?

Short Essay Questions

1. What kind of atmosphere does Machado create with her epigrams?

2. What is the effect of the narrator remembering scenes of sexual intimacy within the context of the virus destroying civilization?

3. How does Benson learn to protect herself from the girls with bells for eyes?

4. Throughout the story, the narrator provides instructions to the reader, about how to read the story aloud. What effect does this have?

5. What is Machado’s style like?

6. What is the DA’s relationship with Benson?

7. How is Stabler’s life unlike the girls with bells with eyes?

8. What is the dominant investigation taking place in ‘"Especial Heinous"?

9. How does the quality of love change over the course of "Inventory"?

10. What do we know about the virus that is killing people off in "Inventory"?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What is missing from this book? What should have been covered or presented that was not? What is the effect of this absence? Describe an element that ought to have been covered, and explain why it would have made the book stronger.

Essay Topic 2

Write an evaluative review of Her Body and Other Parties. What is this book’s place in culture? What are its uses? What are its limitations?

Essay Topic 3

What are the dangers confronting women in Machado’s stories, and what are the skills they develop—or skills that Machado herself shows us, as narrator—that overcome the dangers or at least compensate for losses?

(see the answer keys)

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