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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 colors does Leigh describe her mother’s voice (9)?

2. To which of the following does Leigh presume Brian compares her artwork?

3. Which of the following examples of “silly childhood rhyme” does Leigh recall when walking out of Dorothy’s funeral (14)?

4. Which of the following smells does Leigh note on Alex?

5. Which of the following does Waipo note “have been particularly good this season” (51)?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why does Brian note Leigh should not have received the box she reports receiving from the bird Dorothy became?

2. How is what had been Dorothy’s favorite Taoist temple described when Leigh approaches it?

3. What does Leigh note as of interest in the park she visits with Waipo on her first full day in Taipei?

4. What reasons does Leigh give for asserting that the body in the casket is not her mother?

5. How does Leigh relate her parents’ meeting to the Renards?

6. What does Leigh note about her fourteenth birthday?

7. What is contained in the box the bird Dorothy became left for Leigh?

8. What reasons does Brian offer Leigh for his departure from her grandparents’ home at his point of departure?

9. How does Leigh imagine Axel composing in response to the park she visits with Waipo on her first full day in Taipei?

10. What reasons does Leigh give for her quickly taking a liking to Caro?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Leigh muses that “You can tell when people are falling in love. So there must be a way to see if people are falling out of love, right?” (217) after Dorothy calls 911 on herself. Is there such an indicator as Leigh suggests? What in the novel shows that there is or is not such an indicator, and how does it do so?

Essay Topic 2

Leigh notes that the first time she sees Brian cry since Dorothy’s funeral is in her grandparents’ home (57). What significance does it have that this is the case, and how is that significance put across by the novel and its contexts?

Essay Topic 3

Leigh repeatedly calls attention to cracks in reality that appear only in brief flashes. Explicate the imagery of those cracks.

(see the answer keys)

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