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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. What about the shirt she finds in her bathroom makes Nell worried that her vague memory from the bar bathroom on the previous evening might be real?

2. What part of Patricia Faith's broadcast upsets Francie?

3. What is Nell's line of work?

4. In Chapter Eight, what is it revealed that Colette has been worrying about?

5. What does the app the women find on Winnie's phone do?

Short Essay Questions

1. When Colette arrives home after her run in Chapter Eight, what do she and Charlie argue about?

2. How does Bodhi Mogaro's attorney explain away the evidence against Mogaro?

3. When the narrator is pacing inside her house, what memory does she recall, wondering if it was a hallucination?

4. How does Chapter One hint at trouble in the narrator's childhood?

5. When the police arrive at Nell's to question her, what memory from her past temporarily confuses her?

6. In Chapter Eight, what memory does Nell suddenly have related to smoking?

7. Who is "Token," and what is the implied source of his nickname?

8. How do the narrative perspective and point of view shift from the Prologue through Chapter Three?

9. What does Francie remember about Mr. Colburn, her high school science teacher?

10. When Colette is at the park in Chapter Eight, what secret desire is she thinking about, and what stops her from trying to obtain it?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Given the thematic motifs in The Perfect Mother, why is it so appropriate that the solution to the mystery it contains rests on the reader finally understanding how identities have been obscured by assumptions? By the end of the novel, the reader is aware of having misunderstood the identities of Joshua, Token, and the first-person narrator. The novel's puzzle can only be solved when the reader fully understands each of these identities. What does this have to do with other aspects of the novel, such as the media's misrepresentation of people and the emphasis on perspective created by shifts in narrative point of view and perspective? Write an essay in which you consider how the inference gaps that structure this mystery mimic the novel's thematic concerns. Support your assertions with evidence drawn from throughout the text; be sure to cite any quoted evidence in MLA format.

Essay Topic 2

What messages about female friendship are conveyed in The Perfect Mother? How do these messages relate to the novel's concerns with marginalization and the role of women in American society? How does the novel portray the complexity of friendship, and which aspects of friendship does it seem to value most? Write an essay that takes and defends a position about the messages this novel conveys about friendship among women. Support your assertions with evidence drawn from throughout the text; be sure to cite any quoted evidence in MLA format.

Essay Topic 3

What messages about impulsiveness and risk-taking are conveyed in The Perfect Mother? Which characters make risky or impulsive decisions? Do these kinds of decisions turn out differently for "good" and "bad" characters? Do the consequences--or lack of consequences--characters face seem realistic? How would the tone of the book change if the three amateur sleuths at the center of the story faced dire consequences for their choices? Would this impact the book's entertainment value? How much of the good luck these characters experience is simply necessary given the book's genre, and how much is actually meant to convey messages about risky and impulsive behavior? Write an essay that takes and defends a position on the messages the text conveys about impulsiveness and risk-taking. Support your assertions with evidence drawn from throughout the text; be sure to cite any quoted evidence in MLA format.

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