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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. Whom does Rory have the easiest time relating to on his first day back with his family?

2. What does the description of Maddy fussing over Beth foreshadow?

3. What does Beth chiefly notice about Meg when they are first reunited in September of 2006?

4. Where is Colin on Easter of 2005, when he emails all three of his children?

5. What is the purpose of the description of Lorelei coming out into the yard during Easter of 2004?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does dramatic irony create a bittersweet mood when Lorelei announces her success in staying at Maddy's house?

2. During Beth's September, 2006 visit to England, what contrast is there between her attitude toward the affair and Bill's?

3. In her Chapter 8 email to Jim, what claim does Lorelei make about the cleanliness of her home, and how is this contradicted by evidence elsewhere in the text?

4. What does Lorelei's Chapter 16 email to Jim reveal happened between her and Rhys on the night before Rhys's death?

5. What is Vicky's perspective on the way Lorelei helps her during her illness?

6. What obstacle prevents Lorelei and Jim from spending time together in person, and how does Jim propose they deal with this issue?

7. In her February 5th email to Jim, what ideas about the generational perpetuation of trauma does Lorelei express?

8. What is Lorelei's explanation to Jim regarding why she is always hungry?

9. How does Beth describe her last couple of years in Australia to Bill when they talk on the way to pick Bill's kids up from school?

10. How does Colin's conversation with Beth alter the reader's understanding of his conversation with Rory about Kayleigh and Tia?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What is the nature of the symbolic relationship between Lorelei Bird and Bird House? Does the house symbolize Lorelei, or an aspect of her? Or is the house more like another character in the story, one that Lorelei has a relationship with that is even more important to her than her relationships with people? Write an essay that considers Bird House as a setting and how the changes in this setting over time shed light on Lorelei and her family. Your essay should make and defend a clear claim about the symbolic nature of the relationship between Lorelei and her home. Support your ideas with evidence drawn from throughout the text.

Essay Topic 2

How does Jewell create a more complex and nuanced narrative by shifting the narrative perspective? Write an essay in which you describe the dominant narrative perspective and how Jewell introduces other perspectives through Lorelei's emails and passages told from new perspectives. Make and defend a claim about the purpose of this perspective shifting. Support your ideas with evidence drawn from throughout the novel.

Essay Topic 3

What does it mean that Beth has chosen Lorelei's room as her own? What things of Lorelei's has she kept, and what has she changed? What does Beth mean when she says that this is her "first real room"? (384). Is there some significance to the fact that she has moved into this room just as she becomes a mother, herself? Write an essay that considers how her move back home to Bird House to occupy Lorelei's old room characterizes Beth and what it signifies about who she has become in adult life. Support your ideas with evidence drawn from throughout the text.

(see the answer keys)

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