1)

The extract belongs to the 4th chapter of the novel and it represents a crucial moment in the development of plot and the characters’ level of awareness about the meaning of their encounter.

Indeed, this is the second time Fiona and Henry meet. It is not a planned arrangement since Fiona is totally surprised to realize that the young man, the life of whom she has decided to save, has followed her despite the unfavorable weather conditions from London to Newcastle in the desperate effort to have a contact with her.

The writer’s intention is without any doubt to provide the intelligent reader hints about both characters’ emotionally response when facing each other. The novelist offers such information into two different ways: firstly, he adopts the technique of telling and once he has decided to do that he adopts Fiona’s point of view. This implies the reader can only see facts from her perspective and only indirectly from Henry’s point of view.

What adds quality to narration is the use of language made: the narrator exploits elliptic sentences that focus on the different parts of Henry’s face and body. They show the young man’s transformation after what Fiona perceives as “young health”.
It recalls the previous use of “transformation”. The points Fiona rests on are the typical forms used in courtly love poetry, thus communicating sort of romantic attitude in her thoughts. This explains for the reference to the “face of a Romantic poet, a cousin of Keats or Shelley”. Both Keats and Shelley were Romantic poets that died of tuberculosis, a desperate disease at the time of their lives that had the same effect of today’s cancer or leukemia.
Henry’s personality appears vividly as the one of a young man full of energy even when he was trying to be apologetic. The repetition of “too” before “vivid” and “hungry” returns an image of strength. Also, the intelligent reader and the smart novelist, clearly perceive a typical attitude of adolescence when he refers to Henry’s  effort “to order in his thoughts the sequence of events”. All in all, the reader may well understand that the choice of the narrator produces the same effect a film director may get when he adopts a close-up in his scenes to let the audience come into close contact with the characters of the film. The result is the reader feels as if she or he were in front of a picture thus it can be said the novelist reaches a cinematic effect even if both characters are still in the scene. They do not seem to move and everything is only true in Fiona’s mind.
Interesting is to realize that Fiona’s interior monologue is busy making a comparison between before and now: Henry’s first impression and their second meeting, but strangely enough Fiona also thinks or better “wonders” whether her mother would consider Henry’s face as the one of a Romantic poet.
Why does Fiona think of her mother? Why she is busy copying with her emotions? What justifies such thought?
This is a brilliant indirect connection the novelist wants the intelligent reader to do and he does it indirectly.
Readers are not all the same.

2)

The extract refers to a scene in the 1st chapter that occurs just after a row between the protagonist and her husband. She is looking out of the window and the reader can clearly perceive Fiona’s mood when she cannot understand the change her marriage and her husband as well as undergone. The function of the quotation is clearly to introduce and make the reader reflect on marriage crisis.
In addition, as the intelligent reader of the two extracts of the class test can clearly see, in a comparative analysis, what the novelist is really interested in is to follow the stream of consciousness of his female character and one of the most effective means to do it is through the exploitation of scenes. Both the first and the second extract are scenes and therefore the effect on the reader as well as the intention of the writer is dramatic. A scene is the minimal unit of a dramatic product of a drama or play.

3)

The more important themes of the novel are:

Fiona’s emotional parabola in order to experience how difficult it is to live with one’s choices, the consequences of which are not easily apparent on the very moment you make them.
The controversial theme of religious vs. scientific approaches to life: there are different position and stands in front of making decisions that may or may not be in line with one’s religious belief.
The role of experience and therefore of time are too crucial aspects of everybody’s life.