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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Leda tell Nina she should do with her life?
(a) Have affairs but do not get caught.
(b) Take some time away from her family to figure out what she wants.
(c) Accept her role as wife and mother.
(d) Go back to University.

2. What did Brenda ask Leda for before they left after spending the night in Calabrese?
(a) Something Leda had written.
(b) A picture of her family.
(c) Some food to take with them.
(d) Some money to go back to her family.

3. Who gave Professor Hardy Leda's essay?
(a) Brenda.
(b) Leda's professor.
(c) Leda sent it to him.
(d) Gianni.

4. What does Leda tell Nina happened to her as a mother after she returned to her daughters?
(a) She resented her daughters for ruining her career.
(b) She felt an irreparable distance had grown between herself and her daughters.
(c) She lived more for her daughters than for herself.
(d) She gave up her career entirely to focus on motherhood.

5. What does Leda tell Nina she felt "more useless and desperate without...than with" (72)?
(a) Her husband.
(b) Her daughters.
(c) Her work.
(d) Her mother.

Short Answer Questions

1. What would Leda's daughters say whenever she tried to discuss the years she left them?

2. Where did Leda go for two months the first time she left her family?

3. Why would Leda's daughters ask her to leave the apartment when they were teenagers?

4. Why is Leda annoyed at the movie she attends in Chapter 23?

5. Why does Leda decide against calling her daughters at the start of Chapter 24?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why does Leda decide that Elena probably put something inside of her doll? What does she find?

2. Why was Gianni angry with Leda when she returned from the conference? How did he feel about her newfound drive to work?

3. What answer does Leda give when Nina asks her why she kept the doll after knowing how tormented she was over it?

4. What does Leda remind Nina that she had told her when discussing what she did in the woods with Gino?

5. What does Nina talk to Leda about when they meet at the fair in Chapter 21?

6. What happens to Leda during lunch in her apartment with Giovanni? How does Giovanni try to help?

7. What does Giovanni tell Leda about this life she he brings fish to her apartment in Chapter 20?

8. How did Leda treat Marta during vacation when she sought comfort from her mother when Lucilla and Bianca left her out of a game?

9. What does Nina use to harm Leda at the end of the novel? What does Leda say when her daughters call?

10. In what way was Leda's first pregnancy different from her mother's and other relative's?

(see the answer keys)

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