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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. In the Introduction, who does the author quote regarding the definition for "story" versus "plot?"
(a) C.S. Lewis.
(b) E.M. Forster.
(c) R. Kipling
(d) Himself.

2. What condition made it almost impossible for the author's mom to walk during her last year of life?
(a) Severely bowed-legs.
(b) Fractured foot.
(c) Amputation.
(d) Arthritic knees.

3. What did the author's mother use when she "struck to kill?"
(a) Tongue.
(b) Book.
(c) Chair.
(d) Cane.

4. How many failed marriages did the author's mother have after his father died?
(a) 4.
(b) 3.
(c) 1.
(d) 2.

5. In describing what he learned after his father's death, what does the author consider a means of grace?
(a) Patience.
(b) Change.
(c) Tragedy.
(d) Faith.

Short Answer Questions

1. According to the author, what is the doorway to healing and forgiveness?

2. What place did the author see as an act of God in his life that he paralleled to the entry into the Promised Land?

3. What renders distinctions between past, present and future meaningless, according to the author?

4. Who made no new friends while living in New York for almost twenty years?

5. The author's mother's motto, translated from French is, "you have to ____ in order to be beautiful."

Short Essay Questions

1. What illness did the author's daughter have and how did it affect her?

2. How do ministers lose touch with God?

3. Why does the author write "The Wizard's Tide" and what differs in the book from his childhood memory of his father's death?

4. How is the author's story, our story?

5. What did the author deal with in first two autobiographies?

6. What is the most sacred function of memory?

7. Why/how does the author identify with one of the stained glass images?

8. Why did the author feel like a dwarf as depicted in C. S. Lewis' "The Last Battle?"

9. How did author's mom respond to his fictionalized version of his father's death and how did her reaction to this fist telling affect the author's writing about the death later?

10. Describe the author's mother's bedroom in her 79th street apartment.

(see the answer keys)

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