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

2. Who hunted in Greenwich Park, where Tom and Mary sit in the evenings with their dog?
(a) King Henry VIII.
(b) Queen Anne.
(c) Sir Walter Raleigh.
(d) The Duke of Wellington.

3. What does Ernest Atkinson's maid Jane Shaw think she saw in the old Atkinson townhouse as the brewery was burning?
(a) Ernest Atkinson packing cans of leftover lighting fluid into a satchel.
(b) The ghost of Sarah Atkinson, shouting.
(c) A black cat with its tail on fire.
(d) Helen Atkinson laughing as she watches the brewery collapse from her window.

4. What is the great mystery about the eel that nobody has been able to explain?
(a) What family of species the eel really belongs to.
(b) How eels can live both in salt water and fresh water.
(c) Where and how eels mate.
(d) How long eels have existed.

5. What is the object that Dick Crick treats like it is a real person?
(a) His barge engine.
(b) His father's radio.
(c) His motorbike.
(d) His dead mother's sewing machine.

Short Answer Questions

1. The Atkinsons are an important family in the Gildsey area for all of the following reasons EXCEPT:

2. Which part of London does the couple move to once they are married and Tom takes a job as a history teacher?

3. What is the motto of the New Brewery in Gildsey?

4. Henry Crick, Tom's father, is obsessed with one question about Freddie's death that he repeats over and over again. What is it?

5. What does Tom dream that he considers telling the headmaster about?

Short Essay Questions

1. At the end of chapter 45, Tom and Dick have a conversation about Mary and her baby. What is the one thing Dick confesses to Harry, and what are the two things Tom tells Dick?

2. Chapter 16 is titled "Longitude 0°." What is this a reference to?

3. In chapter 43, Tom Crick parts from Price shouting "don't let him do it!" What is he referring to and what theme that has run through the novel is this a culmination of?

4. In chapter 29, Tom comes up with a way to test whether Dick killed Freddie Parr. What does he do to provoke a reaction from Dick? What reaction does he get?

5. In chapter 50, Harry Crick is bed-ridden in Tom's and Mary's first house in Gildsey. What made him ill?

6. In chapter 22, the role of Ernest Atkinson in the events of Coronation Day is ambiguous. Please describe the events of Coronation Day and why they appear to have happened.

7. In chapter 32, Tom Crick describes the relationship between Mary and Dick. Why does Mary say she wants to "educate" Dick and what is the version of events that she tells Tom?

8. in chapter 15, Tom Crick gives a history of the River Ouse and the Fenlands in its river valley. List at least three details from the river's history.

9. In chapter 14, Tom Crick's student Price asks him whether Tom thinks "we can find whatever we like in history." What it Tom's reply?

10. Chapter 51 is titled "About Phlegm." What is the significance of phlegm for the novel?

(see the answer keys)

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