Exercise 1.
1
Questions 1-4 are based on the following
Fiction passage.
This passage is adapted from Saachika
Reddy, “Winter Orchids” (2017).
Another Wednesday arrived, and with it
another not-quite-self-consciously resplendent
message from Monsieur Tremblay. Avni followed
Line along as his prose, after alighting on the briefest
5 yet warmest of greetings, swept off over the
autumny tundras of Saskatchewan and Manitoba,
tentatively returned back to inspect the contents of
a few curiously dog-eared volumes in Monsieur
Tremblay’s book collection, and finally settled
10 down in the grotto-like eateries and slow-falling
dusks of Old Montreal. As always, it was hard
to say where distant recollection ended and the
more recent past began. Monsieur Tremblay’s
narrations, in sweeping over so much space,
15 seemed to find it necessary to suspend time; the
acrobatics of moving so deftly from sight to sight
allowed no time to pause for the necessary when
and how of a more mundane account. His words
suspended both the dull mechanics of travel—the
20 waits, the rides, the rain, the headaches—and the
threatening absurdity of trying to commit any
rich thought to e-mail. Somehow, thought Avni,
Monsieur Tremblay restored dignity to a medium
that had none of the inherent dignity of pen and
25 ink.
Then, as an anticlimax, there would be a
perfectly unimportant and perfectly edited
business letter attached. “For your review, please
find . . . ” the message would conclude, and Avni
30 would—as a matter of habit—ask herself yet
again why Monsieur Tremblay and his Henry
James*-ian command of English required a
proofreading service.
Whether writing provided Monsieur Tremblay
35 a refuge or whether he poured out his experiences
in mulled bronze prose out of a sort of compulsion
was impossible, even now, for Avni to determine.
*Henry James (1843-1916): American novelist and critic
famous for the complex imagery and syntax of his writing
Copyright 2019 PrepVantage, online at prepvantagetutoring.com
From the headshot, resume, and questionnaire
answers in his client profile she had deduced
40 everything she could; she had constructed an
image of this diminutive 50-year-old wandering
around Prince Edward Island and twining together
the serpentine sentences of his next letter. Yet she
knew nothing of why he wrote like this, why he
45 wrote at all. Wouldn’t it be enough to have these
transcendent thoughts all to oneself?
Avni thought it would be. To have a world such
as Monsieur Tremblay’s all to oneself would be
enough. In such a place, needling messages from
50 one’s brother and mother would have no way to
pierce through. Her mother was the more direct of
the two, and should have been the more irksome:
Avni had received dozens of e-mails with links to
marketing jobs and research fellowships. “Perhaps
55 you should look at this” and “This one looks
interesting” had become interchangeable with her
mother’s presence. Avni’s response was always
indifference. Her brother didn’t send “helpful”
e-mails, for his part. Instead he called at strange
60 hours and asked Avni a series of harmless day-to-
day questions, though the worry and annoyance in
his voice were both unmistakable to her. Beneath
an inquiry about an unimportant movie would be
the thought, “Are you still just patching together
65 part-time work, really, seriously?” Beneath a
remark about an election that neither of them
cared about would be the sentiment, “Please, find
something to do, a real job. I’m not saying this
to insult you. I’m saying this because I have an
70 MBA and you have a PhD, and only one of us is
making good on these facts.” Avni would want to
sigh the loudest possible sigh of relief at the end
of each of these conversations. She was not trying
to convince him of anything at this point, and she
75 had won enough arguments with herself to feel
convinced that she was in the right, that the $18
per hour she made as a proofreader was a measure
of so few of the things that made life worthwhile.
CONTINUE
43
Part 1: Main Issues in the Passage

Fiction Checklist
Practice Exercise 1.1
Can you identify the following elements as they appear in the passage?

Important Characters
Character 1: ________________ ; Role/Traits: ______________________
___________________________________________________________

Character 2: ________________ ; Role/Traits: ______________________

___________________________________________________________

Character 3: ________________ ; Role/Traits: ______________________

___________________________________________________________

Character 4: ________________ ; Role/Traits: ______________________

___________________________________________________________

Overall Issues
Setting: _________________________________

Shifts in Tone or Topic: 1: __________________ _________________

2: __________________ _________________

Structure: ___________________________________________________

Themes: 1. _____________________ 2. _____________________

3. _____________________ 4. _____________________

CONTINUE TO ANSWER
PASSAGE QUESTIONS 1-4

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