2

Level 2 English
91100 (2.3): Analyse significant aspects of unfamiliar
written text(s) through close reading, supported by
evidence
Credits: Four

RESOURCE BOOKLET

Refer to this booklet to answer ALL the questions for English 91100 (2.3).
Check that this booklet has pages 24 in the correct order and that none of these pages is blank.
YOU MAY KEEP THIS BOOKLET AT THE END OF THE EXAMINATION.

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TEXT A: COLUMN / OPINION
Refer to this text to answer Question One for English 91100 (2.3).

A Page in the Life: Mark Haddon

The bestselling writer Mark Haddon tells Horatia Harrod that no character is
too strange to be familiar.
If youre trying to be a successful writer, and you go into a second-hand bookshop, says Mark
Haddon, eyeing me dubiously, its the graveyard of people whose books havent been wanted.
Haddons third and latest novel, The Red House, is set in Hay-on-Wye, the capital of secondhand bookshops. So I have arranged to meet him in a second-hand bookshop, where I learn
that Haddon gravitates towards poetry, drama, fiction, neuroscience and philosophy and, more
saliently, that he hates second-hand bookshops. Five minutes later we have decamped to a
caf across the road, and our brief, enervating visit is forgotten.
I cant help but be surprised by Haddons wariness. After all, his 2003 debut, The Curious
Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, sold two million copies. It was the bestselling novel by
a British writer of that decade and has become, as Haddon himself puts it, a vaguely global
institution. (This summer the playwright Simon Stephens will bring it to the stage at the National
Theatre.) But Haddons feelings about the book are ambivalent. The books Id always loved
were hated by some people, he says. I was a little bit afraid of lowest common
denominatorism. I think good books have to make a few people angry.
Fortuitously enough, cafs are important in Haddons writing life. He wrote parts of The Red
House in the basement of a caf in north Oxford, where he lives with his wife and their two
sons. Were a very happy family, which is rather poor fuel for a novel, he says. The caf was a
place to observe and listen.
Other activities you might loosely term research include watching television and reading
magazines and newspapers. Haddon has a particular penchant for real-life stories I threw
myself under a tube train, he suggests, or, My father had a sex change. I havent done a
transgendered character yet, he says thoughtfully, sipping a cup of green tea, but I quite fancy
that as a subject.
I ask him whether he has an affinity with unusual people, outsiders. The Curious Incident was
narrated by a meticulous teenage savant; the follow-up, A Spot of Bother, featured a hysterical
hypochondriac and, even more daringly, a dull gay man. But no, he looks aghast: Youre
making me sound like Lady Di.
By Horatia Harrod, The Telegraph - 01 May 2012
http://beattiesbookblog.blogspot.co.nz/2012/05/page-in-life-mark-haddon.html Read 3 May, 2012

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TEXT B: PROSE (FICTION)
Refer to this text to answer Question Two for English 91100 (2.3).

The house was shuttered against the coming winter, and the spectre of my grandfather stood
on the front step to greet me before dissolving into the shadows. I had left the rain behind, and
the weak autumn light descended from the clouds and bounced off the cliffs to the north,
playing tricks. The stillness frightened me. I had been coming here most of my life and my
arrival was always accompanied by movement and sound: Grandpa waving, one of the dogs
wriggling its hips and coming over to sniff and bark hello, always at least one chicken out of its
coop, scratching and nudging the earth with a crowing rooster not far behind. The bustle
always diverted me from what I felt now - a slight panic, a creeping awareness of the places o
the farm I had managed to avoid for twenty years staring at my back, willing me to turn and
face them.
The looming presence of the house was exaggerated by the shadows it cast with the sun
behind its turrets and chimneys. Long spikes stretched across the paddocks. The flowers had
retreated for the autumn and the ivy that climbed the grey stone walls had been reduced to a
tangle. Rotten autumn leaves gathered on the ground in damp clumps and even the
macrocarpas that lined the nearby paddocks seemed to have moved closer.
A single magpie perched on the nearest chimney. It leaned towards me, leering. I stood on
the gravel and stared at it a while before turning away to unpack my books and bags from the
back seat. I had a fresh tattoo on the inside of my left wrist, and it ached with the effort of
carrying the weight in my arms. When I kicked the car door closed, the sound was like an
explosion in the late afternoon air and the magpie beat its wings, protesting.
From Magpie Hall by Rachel King, Vintage Book published by Random House New Zealand
2009.

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TEXT C: POETRY
Refer to this text to answer Question Three for English 91100 (2.3).

Seven Mysteries
Now write down
the seven mysteries:
why you so young and beautiful should die;
why consciousness prevents
escape into the chestnut branches where
foliage goes soft
with Gods vermilion;
why what is said is seldom what is meant;
why men and women work, come home,
cook meals, argue and renew
their vows of silence or revenge;
why we were different;
why there are seven of everything;
why I go on
broken-winded like that horse we saw
on the ridge above Waipatiki
by a bent tree
Watching the waves roll in.
Michael Jackson (b1940)
From Classic New Zealand Poets in Performance edited by Jack Ross and Jan Kemp, Published
by Auckland University Press, 2006.

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QUESTION ONE: COLUMN / OPINION
Refer to Text A in the resource booklet to answer this question.
The writer communicates that Mark Haddon is drawn to the unusual.
Analyse how the writer has used humour and irony to present how his expectations of Mark
Haddon were challenged.

QUESTION TWO: PROSE (FICTION)

Refer to Text B in the resource booklet to answer this question.
The narrators arrival at her grandfathers house is a contrast to past visits.
Analyse how the narrator reveals her feelings about this visit.

QUESTION THREE: POETRY

Refer to Text C in the resource booklet to answer this question.
Analyse how the poet examines the uncertainty of life.
To analyse the text fully, you may wish to refer to:

imagery

sound devices

structures.