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The Looking-Glass – General Understanding Quiz

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Approximate Reading Times

Quick Read: under 5 minutes
Short Story: 5 to 30 minutes
Novelette: 30 to 90 minutes
Novella: 1.5 to 2.5 hours

  • Landscape with Flatiron

    Short Story by Haruki Murakami. A troubled young woman and middle-aged artist bond over bonfires the artist constructs on a beach. Both appear to be trying to escape unstated traumas from their past. Their lives are contrasted with that of the woman’s boyfriend, a carefree surfer and musician.

  • The Barber’s Trade Union

    Short Story by Mulk Raj Anand. When a young Indian barber tries to improve his appearance by dressing more professionally, he is verbally abused and humiliated by village elders for acting above his caste. Rather giving in, he changes the way he works and turns the tables on his detractors.

  • The Tale

    An English naval captain encounters a trading ship which he suspects is a privateer supplying fuel to enemy U-boats. With no legal basis for seizing the ship, he finds a way to send it and all on board to their doom without firing a shot.

  • The Kugelmass Episode

    Short Story by Woody Allen. Kugelmass, bored with his “oafish” wife, wants a lustful extra-marital affair with no commitments. His wish comes true when a failed magician offers him a chance to seduce any woman from world literature. His first choice begins well, but ends badly; his second proves disastrous.

  • Train

    Short Story by Joy Williams. A sensitive, compassionate girl (Dan) rides a long-distance train with the family of a rude, cynical, self-absorbed friend (Jane). Dan “comes of age” as she realizes the world is not always a happy place, and that Jane is unfit to be her friend.

  • Private Lies

    Short Story by Bobbie Ann Mason. A seemingly happily married man becomes obsessed with finding the soon-to-be eighteen-year-old woman he and his previous wife gave up for adoption at birth. The quest causes him to look up his ex-wife, leading to an affair that may destroy his current marriage.

  • The Golden Honeymoon

    Short Story by Ring Lardner. An elderly couple go on a second honeymoon to celebrate their 50th (golden) wedding anniversary. By chance, they meet the woman’s ex-boyfriend vacationing with his wife. The couples form an instant friendship, leading to some comic competition between the two men.

  • Goodbye, Columbus

    Novella by Phillip Roth. When a twenty-three-year-old man from a working class Jewish family falls for a spoiled college student from a wealthy one, the relationship appears doomed. The glue that holds their relationship together is sex, and readers are left to decide if it was ended accidentally or deliberately.

  • The Revolt of “Mother”

    Short Story by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. An insensitive, authoritarian farmer decides to build a barn on the site of a promised new house and refuses to discuss the issue with his long-suffering wife. While he is away for a few days on farm business, she does something about it.

  • Children of the Ash-Covered Loam

    Short Story by N. V. M. Gonzalez. A description of life, ritual and coming of age in a Philippine subsistence farming family during the planting season. The major conflict in the story, where families band together to communally sow each other’s kaingin (slashed and burned fields), is with nature
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