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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 is Lorelei looking for when she discovers that some of her things are missing?

2. What does Molly want to do for a living when she grows up?

3. When Beth calls while Meg and Bill are in Greece, what reason does she give for calling Bill's phone?

4. In her email to Jim, whom does Lorelei say might invite her for Christmas?

5. What is Beth trying to talk to Meg about when Molly interrupts their phone call to complain about Alfie and her father?

Short Essay Questions

1. What similarities does Meg see between Alfie and Rhys, and when was she most worried about these similarities?

2. Based on Lorelei's emails, what seems to be true about her own childhood and its impact on the way she parents her own children?

3. What surprises Beth about Molly's existence, and what does it make her realize about herself?

4. How does the perspective shift between Meg and Beth after Meg tries to call Beth back clarify Beth's intentions in calling and her reasons for not answering when Meg calls back?

5. Even though she is disgusted by her own behavior, why does Beth think she cannot give up her affair with Bill?

6. What is the one thing about Lorelei that Vicky cannot understand, and how does she try to reconcile herself to it?

7. In the early years of her relationship with Lorelei, how does Vicky view Lorelei, and how does she view Lorelei's children?

8. When Molly asks Meg whether she would have liked Rhys,what is Meg's response?

9. How does the very first passage describing a Bird family Easter egg hunt characterize Meg?

10. During their vacation to Greece, what details demonstrate that Bill is not as involved with the family as Meg is?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Consider all of Lorelei's emails as a single body of text. How do they demonstrate her growth? How does knowing that Lorelei is capable of change impact the reader's feelings about how her story ends? How does it affect the reader's feelings about other characters in the story? Write an essay that makes and defends a claim about the impact that seeing Lorelei's growth has on the reader, connecting this to the book's larger ideas about family and character. Support your assertions with evidence drawn from throughout the text.

Essay Topic 2

On page 142, Beth says that her family members are "like a badly planned dinner party." What does she mean? Do you agree? What are the differences among them that she would point to? What deeper things do they have in common? Write an essay in which you consider how different the Birds really are from one another and what significance exists in the attributes they share. Support your claims with evidence drawn from throughout the text.

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.

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