View a FREE sample

This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Tom dream that he considers telling the headmaster about?
(a) He dreams of Mary as she was when she was 15.
(b) He dreams of the headmaster drowning in a canal.
(c) He dreams of a woman wailing in a supermarket.
(d) He dreams of Price as the Prime Minister of Britain.

2. What is the main fish that the Cricks and their neighbors catch for food?
(a) Eel.
(b) Carp.
(c) Trout.
(d) Salmon.

3. What does Tom Crick think the French really celebrate on Bastille Day when they mark the beginning of the French Revolution?
(a) An event that never took place.
(b) The beginning of the Napoleonic Empire.
(c) The power of the mob over government.
(d) An event that was not nearly as important at the time as it is now made out to be.

4. What does Ernest Atkinson do with the three remaining steam ships he owns?
(a) He sells them to the city of Gildsey for the use of the fire brigade.
(b) He converts them into pleasure cruise ships.
(c) He names them after his daughter, Helen I, Helen II, and Helen III.
(d) He donates them to the army to aid in the war effort.

5. What is the River Tom Crick describes at great length to explain how the landscape of the novel's setting is formed?
(a) The Ouse.
(b) The Cam.
(c) The Thames.
(d) The Tyne.

6. Which of the following does NOT draw Mary and Tom closer together?
(a) They both grew up without a mother.
(b) They both escape to the ruined windmill together in the afternoons.
(c) They both take the same train to school every day.
(d) They both have odd older brothers.

7. The Atkinsons are an important family in the Gildsey area for all of the following reasons EXCEPT:
(a) They helped drain the marshes by buiding locks and canals.
(b) They represented the Gildsey district in parliament.
(c) They ran a famous brewery.
(d) They owned a major textile factory.

8. Which one of the following is NOT one of the ghosts that is said to haunt the marches along the River Leem?
(a) The Grim Hound of Gargoyle Hall.
(b) The Monk of Sudchurch.
(c) The Singing Swans of Wash Fen Mere.
(d) The Headless Ferryman of Staithe.

9. What was Freddie Parr's father, Jack Parr, infamous for in the Gildsey area?
(a) His habit of stealing livestock off the river barges.
(b) His heckling of young women who worked in the fields.
(c) His ability to smuggle liquor out of an American military base nearby.
(d) His tendency to get into fights with the local barman.

10. Johannes Schmidt, whose theory about eels and their mating habits is considered the most accurate one, thought that eels mate where?
(a) The Sargasso Sea.
(b) The Gulf of Mexico.
(c) In river springs.
(d) The Arctic Ocean.

11. What does Tom Crick tell his students is the difference between animals and humans?
(a) Humans can plan for the future.
(b) Animals don't kill each other out of jealousy.
(c) Humans have the ability to forgive each other.
(d) Humans tell each other stories.

12. What is the agreement between Helen and Ernest Atkinson in exchange for Ernest allowing Helen to marry Harry Crick?
(a) That Helen will become a nurse at the Kessling Hall asylum.
(b) That Helen will find a way to assuage Sarah Atkinson's ghost.
(c) That Helen will have Ernest's child.
(d) That Helen will help Ernest commit suicide.

13. What is the landscape the novel is set in?
(a) The Fens in eastern England.
(b) The coastline of Cornwall.
(c) The Lake District in northern England.
(d) The docks of East London.

14. What World War I battle was Tom's father injured in and saw his brother killed in earlier in the day?
(a) Verdun.
(b) Marne.
(c) Somme.
(d) Ypres.

15. What does Tom Crick find in the river that he thinks caused the bruise that killed Freddie Parr?
(a) A wrench Dick uses to fix his motorbike.
(b) A beer bottle from the defunct Atkinson brewery.
(c) A metal ball from a slingshot Tom has seen Jack Parr use to kill birds.
(d) A cricket bat with an odd indentation and a label that reads F.P.

Short Answer Questions

1. Where does Tom put the bottle that he found drifting in the water after Freddie Parr's death?

2. What tells Tom that he and Mary must finish their argument quickly because the park is about to close?

3. During the festivities for the newly crowned King George V, the New Atkinson Brewery is destroyed. How?

4. Lewis Scott, the headmaster at the school where Tom Crick teaches, thinks history should be considered part of what other field?

5. Who says, "explaining's a way of avoiding the facts while you pretend to get near to them?"

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 855 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample