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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. In what year does Laura die?

2. Who founded Port Ticonderoga?

3. What name do the group of people who want to invade Sakiel-Norn call themselves?

4. The woman says that one thing that the man gives her is the reason that she inevitably returns to him. What does he give her?

5. Where does the protagonist of the novel within the novel keep the picture at which she looks in the prologue?

Short Essay Questions

1. In chapter 6, the man and the woman talk about love and the way the man often says that love isn't real. Do you think the man truly believes this?

2. At the end of chapter 6, the man is writing a story including characters X, Y, Z, and B. What is this story about?

3. How do Winifred and Richard treat the Chase sisters?

4. In chapter 1, what is the official conclusion of Laura's cause of death?

5. How does Iris respond to requests for information about Laura?

6. In chapter 5, how do the two sisters feel toward their governess, Miss Violence?

7. How does Laura respond to living with Richard and Iris?

8. In chapter 4, X is hired to kill the king. How is X supposed to get close enough to the king to kill him?

9. How is chapter 2 structured?

10. In chapter 4, how does the woman feel about the man's story?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The information related to the reader through the newspaper clippings and that communicated through Iris's memoir often disagrees. Throughout the novel many of the characters, particularly Winifred and Laura are obsessed with ensuring that their behavior and demeanor fits in to what they feel befits people of their social class, or at least that their behavior appears to comply with it. Yet, often the truth as presented in Iris's memoir is much more sinister than the supposed truth reported by the media. Discuss the disconnect between the public facade and private reality of the Chase/Griffen family as presented in the novel? What characters do you think care more about appearance than reality and what characters care more about reality? In other words, what are the priorities of the main characters? Why is so much more importance placed on appearing upright than on acting upright?

Essay Topic 2

Laura tells Winifred that marriage is not about love, it is about business. Do you think that the marriages in the novel support this view? Are there any loving marriages or are they all solely business arrangements? Is Laura right to find marriage outdated? Within the marriages that you classify as predominantly business arrangements, is there any elements of love? Do you think that the idea of relationships based on business rather than affection is confined to marriage? What other relationships in the novel are based on business rather than friendship or love?

Essay Topic 3

Throughout the novel, Iris toys with the idea that people are compelled to leave their mark on the world, whether this is through actions, or leaving behind a message, or simply scrawling on the stall of the bathroom at a doughnut shop. Find at least three examples of times in which Iris reflects on the idea of leaving a mark. What is the significance of these passages in terms of the novel and sub novel? What do these say about Iris's own desire to leave something behind? What does Iris's refusal to share things about Laura say? Does this mean Iris thinks Laura would not have wanted to leave her mark in the same way she asserts all people do?

(see the answer keys)

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