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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 was the name of the author's maternal grandmother?

2. What rubber doll did Dudley Knott carry with him everywhere?

3. In what year was the author's first novel published?

4. What hymn did the old nurse teach the author and his young brother?

5. In what year was "Now and Then" written?

Short Essay Questions

1. Besides complaints about him praying in his first class at Harvard, what other surprises did the author's students give him?

2. Who is Naya?

3. Why did the author like having Dudley Knott as a friend?

4. Who goes to Bermuda with the author when he is a child and how does he describe their arrival in Bermuda?

5. What events from the author's life most fit the title for Part Two of "Telling Secrets?"

6. How do our other selves develop as explained in Part Two of "Telling Secrets?"

7. How did the author's kids connect him with the outside world when they were small?

8. What did the author expect in a Harvard teaching experience that he did not get when he actually taught at Harvard Divinity School?

9. How does the author connect his feelings to what he describes about the Tower in London?

10. Why does the author describe Bermuda as enchanting?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Why is the author's daughter sick? How did she get well? How did the increasing wellness of his daughter, help the author to realize that he was not well? How does the author explain what happens to someone who after being sick for so long is suddenly well? How does this new "freedom" affect them?

Essay Topic 2

The author, in Part One, talks about loving self like you love a neighbor, also expounding on the love of God. Discuss how this information ties in with the authors warning about bleeding hearts; how he came to feel again the hush of God; and how he realized as his daughter healed, he needed healing himself because he had been "huddled" in a dark stable of his own making.

Essay Topic 3

On page 10 of the book, the author writes that "don't talk, don't trust, don't feel" is supposed to be the unwritten law of dysfunctional families. How does this "law" manifest itself in the author's life as a child when his father commits suicide, as well as in the immediate events following his father's death (e.g. the lack of a funeral, the family move out of the country, the mother's behavior, ...); and how does the "law manifest itself in later events involving the author and his brother's relationship with their mother as she aged?

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