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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 Chapter Ten: X is Where I Am, what does Deborah say Clara said her mother's life was for?

2. In Chapter Eight: The Republic, what myth does Deborah say captured her?

3. In Chapter Nine: Night Wandering, what offensive flavor does Deborah say was the only ice lolly left?

4. In Chapter Nine: Night Wandering, what possession of her mother's does Deborah say she kept?

5. In Chapter Eleven: Footsteps in the House, why does Deborah say she said life is worth living in her quoted writing?

Short Essay Questions

1. In Chapter Seven: The Black and Bluish Darkness, what meeting does Deborah say she went to? How did she feel at the meeting?

2. In Chapter Eight: The Republic, what does Deborah say Simone de Beauvoir fought against so strongly? Who did she refuse in this quest?

3. In Chapter Ten: X is Where I Am, how does Deborah say she felt after her mother's death? What did she ride instead of an e-bike?

4. In Chapter Ten: X is Where I Am, what does Deborah say she told Clara about dating again? How does she say Clara responded?

5. In Chapter Eight: The Republic, who does Deborah say she met? What did Deborah advise?

6. In Chapter Ten: X is Where I Am, why does Deborah say she thought her sense of direction was lost? How does she say this related to her mother?

7. In Chapter Eight: The Republic, where does Deborah say she saw the word "winterized"? How did she apply this to herself?

8. In Chapter Seven: The Black and Bluish Darkness, what does Deborah say she needed to compose? How does she apply this as a metaphor?

9. In Chapter Nine: Night Wandering, where does Deborah say her mother grew up? What did her mother teach her in old age?

10. In Chapter Nine: Night Wandering, what possession from her mother does Deborah say she kept? What touched her most about this?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Deborah Levy begins her autobiography:

"As Orson Welles told us, if we want a happy ending, it depends on where we stop the story" (1).

Why do you think this is the first line of the autobiography? And how does the ending of the book tie into the idea of a happy ending, or an ending where the story stops? How does happiness, in life, in ending, in grieving and death, tie into the autobiography?

Essay Topic 2

Arundhati Roy's God of Small Things is a novel about how the small things of life both make up and allow relief from the big things of life. As it says in the novel:

"Even later, on the thirteen nights that followed this one, instinctively they stuck to the Small Things. The Big Things ever lurked inside. They knew that there was nowhere for them to go. They had nothing. No future. So they stuck to the small things (21.68)."

Consider the Big Things and Small Things in Levy's writing. How do the small things make up the big? How do the small things in autobiography and life allow escape from the big for brief periods of time? How does this fictionality of life, in Arundhati's novel, also lend to the fictionality and lived truth of Levy's life in writing and living?

Essay Topic 3

Deborah's grief over her mother and the sense of unmooring from the physical places her mother inhabited are alongside her grief over her marriage and the sense of unmooring from everything Levy spent her life creating. How does Levy show these griefs as similar and different? How are they both dealt with and how are they mourned both by actions described or by the act of writing the book?

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