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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. How does Sir Quentin try to justify his behavior to Fleur?

2. When Fleur goes out with Wally, what does he tell her about Bucks Gilbert?

3. When Fleur stays up all night going through her manuscript, what does she realize?

4. Fleur calls her publisher again asking for the manuscript of Warrender Chase. Why do they tell her it was destroyed?

5. What is that Sir Quentin has been enforcing upon the members?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the traumatic news Fleur receives near the end of Chapter 8?

2. Chapter 11 is filled with a great deal of information, often through Fleur's narrations from the present as she remembers the events of her past. Describe two concepts on which she sheds light at this point in the book.

3. When her novel is ultimately published, how does Fleur initially react?

4. In Chapter 9, yet another character points out a correlation between Warrender Chase and reality. Who is it, and what is pointed out?

5. What does Fleur first think might be the problem with her novel when the publisher requests to meet with her in person?

6. Before Fleur works out a plan to retrieve her manuscript, fate intervenes and presents her with a way to do so. What happens?

7. After Fleur retrieves her manuscript and goes home, she is visited by Dottie. What happens during this visit?

8. Fleur consults her friend, Solly Mendelsohn, when she realizes that the publisher now has the only copy of her manuscript. Why?

9. How does Sir Quentin lure Fleur to his office after she retypes her manuscript and gives the copies to Solly?

10. Describe how at least one of the maxims Fleur remembers from childhood helps direct her actions as attempts to get her manuscript back.

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Describe Fleur Talbot as "character type," as she does with Beryl Tims and Dottie, the "English Roses." What would her character type be named? Who else might fit into this character type - another literary character, someone in a movie, someone from your life? Why? How does that person compare to Fleur?

Essay Topic 2

Fleur Talbot, as an author, seems to spend her life observing, categorizing and accumulating ideas for her writing. Discuss how this impacts her life. Does it get in her way? Do you think most authors work this way?

Essay Topic 3

Describe as much as you can about the culture in which Fleur lives based on descriptions from the novel. How much of that culture is revealed through her eyes? Could this novel be set anywhere else? Could the story have transpired, in tact, had it taken place in the US, or Shanghai or Paris or Munich in 1949? How might it have differed had it been moved from England?

(see the answer keys)

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