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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. The unnamed narrator and her dark-haired friend interacted with what type of object at the art exhibition?
(a) An airplane.
(b) A swimming pool.
(c) A maze.
(d) A gurney.

2. The first section of the novel Topics of Conversation is set in which month of 2000?
(a) August.
(b) July.
(c) June.
(d) September.

3. The tenant described disliking her acquaintance because she had retained what quality throughout her first few college years?
(a) Purity.
(b) Intelligence.
(c) Cheerfulness.
(d) Originality.

4. The tenant stated that the graduate student dated the undergraduate for how long before he raped her at a party?
(a) 2 months.
(b) 3 months.
(c) 6 months.
(d) 2 weeks.

5. Whose literary work was the unnamed narrator reading during the summer of 2000?
(a) Virginia Woolf.
(b) Sylvia Plath.
(c) Ernest Hemingway.
(d) Jodi Picoult.

Short Answer Questions

1. In what part of the United States did the unnamed narrator attend graduate school, as described in Ann Arbor, 2002?

2. The unnamed narrator states that Artemisia was how old in the summer of 2000?

3. In what city do the unnamed narrator's parents live in the house where they raised their daughter?

4. What was happening in the unnamed narrator's life when her newly-divorced friend Laura moved in with the unnamed narrator's parents?

5. The unnamed narrator reflects in Los Angeles, 2011 that "every confidence is a kind of" (65) what?

Short Essay Questions

1. What distinction does the unnamed narrator make between "the woman as object" and "the woman as subject" (45)?

2. What emotion does the unnamed narrator name as one that is difficult for women to express?

3. For what reason was the narrator in Italy in the summer of 2000?

4. How does the unnamed narrator feel about the truth and lies, according to her statements in Los Angeles, 2011?

5. For what reason does the unnamed narrator use a hedge maze as a metaphor for Artemisia's life?

6. Discuss the epigraph Miranda Popkey includes prior to the start of the novel Topics of Conversation.

7. What is the main setting featured within the section entitled San Francisco, 2010?

8. Describe the four characters featured at the center of the gathering in Ann Arbor, 2002.

9. What does the telephone symbolize within the section of the novel entitled Italy, 2000?

10. How does the unnamed narrator feel about society's understanding of "the woman as object" versus "the woman as subject" (45)?

(see the answer keys)

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