Chapters 25 and 26

Vocabulary work

I. Learn the following words and expressions:

- consequence - edge - cliff - lane - trifle - to take a sip - to overhear - hug - disgusting - I don’t get it. - amusement arcade - efficacy - a cross between smth. and smth. - humiliating

- dignity - tiny - fascination - guts - maturity - mutual - to confess to smth. - twins - to persuade - disastrous - cords - disregard - headphones - adolescence

II. Answer the questions:

1. Describe the New Year’s Eve party Marcus went to. Who did he meet there?

2. Why do you think Ellie behaved the way she did towards her mother?

3. What favour did Will ask from Marcus?

4. How did Ali and Marcus get on?

III. State who these words belong to. Translate and reproduce the situations in which they are used:

1. “You’re so funny. Of course I wouldn’t like to dance! I couldn’t think of anything worse!”

2. “One night of the year I get to behave nearly as badly as you do on the other three hundred and sixty-four, and you stand there giving me a hard time.”

3. “I’d just tell him the first time he got it wrong.”

4. “Leave me with just one scrap of dignity, Marcus. That’s all I’m asking. Just a little tiny, tatty piece.”

5. “Well, I wouldn’t really describe myself as an expert.”

6. “Do you guys want to hang out up here for a while?”

IV. Translate into English:

- кухонные ножницы;

- ему потребовалось только мгновение;

- присматривать за кем-л.;

- у него не было выбора;

- неверно понять кого-л.;

- тяжело вздохнуть в отчаянии;

- показать кого-то с лучшей стороны;

- (и) это всё;

- больное место.

Oral practice

V. Comment on the following:

1. ‘See, if your dad killed himself, nobody would say, you know, oh, he’s got a son to look after. But when women do it, people get all upset. It’s not fair.’ (p. 182)

2. ‘Don’t you ever have conversations where someone took a wrong turn at some point, and then it goes on and on and it becomes too late to put things right?’ (p. 186)

3. Will had remembered every single tiny detail that Rachel had offered him that first night. He knew the names of the books she had illustrated, although he wasn’t absolutely sure whether the first one was called The Way to the Woods or The Way Through the Woods – he would have to check – and her ex’s name, and where he lived, and what he did, and… It was unimaginable that he could have forgotten Ali’s name. (p. 194)

VI. Give a good literary translation of the following:

1. “Marcus looked over at the very small group dancing in the corner where the TV usually was. There were four people, three women and a man, and only one of them seemed to be having a good time: she was sort of punching the air with her fists and shaking her hair. Marcus guessed that this had to be Ellie’s mum – not because she looked like her (no adult looked like Ellie, because no adult would chop her hair up with kitchen scissors and wear black lipstick, and that was all you saw), but because Ellie was clearly embarrassed, and this was the only dancer who would embarrass anyone.” (p. 178-179)

2. “Marcus came round just after midday, in the hairy jumper Fiona had given him for Christmas and a disastrous pair of canary-yellow cords that might have looked cute on a four-year-old. Will was wearing his favourite Paul Smith shirt and a black leather jacket that he liked to think made him look a little like Matt Dillon in Drugstore Cowboy. What was going on here, Will reckoned, was that Marcus was showing a refreshingly rebellious disregard for his dad’s dandyism, so he tried to inculcate a feeling of pride, and to ignore the urge to take him out shopping.” (p. 192)

3. “Ali’s bedroom door was indistinguishable from all the other bedroom doors: no skull and crossbones, no ‘Keep Out’ signs, no hip-hop graffiti; once inside, however, there was no question but that the room belonged to a boy stuck between the equally wretched states of childhood and adolescence in early 1994. Everything was there – the Ryan Giggs poster and the Michael Jordan poster and the Pamela Anderson poster and the Super Mario stickers… A social historian of the future would probably be able to date the room to within a twenty-four-hour period. Will glanced at Marcus, who was looking bewildered. Standing Marcus in front of posters of Ryan Giggs and Michael Jordan was like taking an average twelve-year-old to look at the Tudors in the National Portrait Gallery.” (p. 195)

VII. Agree or disagree with the following statements:

1. Marcus met Ellie at Suzie’s New Year’s Eve party.

2. Marcus invited Ellie to dance and she accepted.

3. Ellie was proud of her mother’s behaviour at the party.

4. Will asked Marcus to pretend he was his son.

5. Marcus told Will that he didn’t want Ellie to be his girlfriend.

6. Fiona thought that taking Marcus to meet Will’s new girlfriend was a mad idea.

7. Rachel remembered Marcus’s name well.

8. Ali and Marcus enjoyed each other’s company.

VIII. Rephrase the following using words and expressions from Chapter 26:

1. ‘I don’t understand it.’

2. ‘She just sort of misunderstood me.’

3. ‘Don’t you ever have conversations where someone took a wrong turn at some point, and then it goes on and on and it becomes too late to explain everything?’

4. It actually irritated Will, who was not, he felt, under any circumstances, a Bill.

5. He was an enthusiastic liar, certainly, but enthusiasm was not the same thing as efficacy, and he was now constantly finding himself in a situation whereby, having lied shamelessly for minutes or days or weeks, he was obliged to articulate the humiliating truth.

6. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you right from the start.

7. She’s not going to be trying to find out whether we’re lying.

8. One sentence, the first sentence she said, was all it took to destroy the elaborate past, present and future he had created for the two of them.

9. Ali himself was slumped in front of his computer, headphones still on, not noticing his guests.

10. Rachel went to check out and came flying back into the sitting room seconds afterwards.

VIII. Retell the 25^th Chapter as if you were:

1. Marcus

2. Ellie

3. Fiona

Retell the 26^th Chapter as if you were:

1. Will

2. Marcus

3. Rachel

4. Ali.

Writing

IX. Write a one-page summary of the Chapters 25,26.