Meet the Prices: Rachel Trivia Quiz

Answer: Malapropisms

A malapropism occurs when a character confuses one word for another, similar-sounding word with a different meaning to humorous effect. It gets its name from Mrs Malaprop, a character in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's play 'The Rivals', who often gets her words mixed up (such as 'pineapple' for 'pinnacle' and 'perpendiculars' for 'particulars'). Rachel also gets her words mixed up throughout the book; examples include 'Cape Carniveral' for 'Cape Canaveral', 'congregations' for 'conjugations', 'philanderist' for 'philanthropist' and 'piccadillies' for 'peccadilloes'.

Incidentally, Rachel also uses more slang than any of her sisters. (Adah is the one who loves palindromes.)

Answer: Platter

Anatole helps interpret Nathan's sermons for the village congregation. Nathan invites him to dinner, seeing him as an ally, and Orleanna serves dinner on a fine china platter painted with blue flowers that had been left behind by a previous inhabitant. The mood turns sour when Anatole warns Nathan that Tata Ndu, the village chief, disapproves of villagers going to church and sees it as a moral decline. He also tries to explain the role of Tata Kuduvundu, the local witch doctor, who Nathan dismisses as a 'nut'. Orleanna sends the girls away to wash up, but Rachel stays behind to watch the argument.

Nathan sends Anatole away and Orleanna nervously makes a joke, and Nathan responds by screaming at her to shut up and smashing the platter. He accuses Orleanna of being too fond of the platter and implies that she was flirting with Anatole by serving him food on it.

Answer: Termite

The villagers' nickname for Rachel is 'Mvula', which is a pale white termite that comes out after the rain. Rachel is very pale and has white-blonde hair, of which she is very proud, but which also attracts a lot of attention from the villagers. They believe that Rachel is so pale because she stays inside too much and is frightened of everything.

Mama Tataba, a local woman who initially helps the Prices with cooking and housework, also calls them 'fufu nsala'. Orleanna discovers that 'fufu' in this context is not manioc porridge, but a rat that hides from sunlight. In other words, Mama Tataba thinks the Prices are cowards, and resents the girls for being ungrateful; she makes a nut butter from groundnuts, but Rachel complains because she wants smooth Jiffy peanut butter.

Answer: Omelette

The Prices have very little money after the church cuts off their funding, and after Nathan beats Rachel and the twins for not cooking dinner when he gets home, they take stock of what food they have. Rachel, a poor cook, attempts to make an omelette but does not know how to make or maintain a fire properly; she ends up burning it, and throws a spatula in frustration. Orleanna, who is recovering at this point, picks up the spatula and tells Rachel that she must serve the burned mess for dinner as punishment for all the years she looked down on Orleanna's cooking. However, Orleanna will teach her to cook.

Rachel is in charge of cooking when Brother Fowles, a Catholic priest and the previous tenant of the house, his Congolese wife and their children drop in for a visit. The Fowles family give the Prices tinned food and medicine, and Rachel wishes she could run away with them.

Answer: Mirror

Rachel is vainer and more interested in her looks than her sisters - Nathan whips her for wearing nail varnish - and she takes a hand mirror with her when the Prices fly out to the Congo. Nelson builds a frame for it and the family hang it on the bedroom wall, and when Orleanna orders the girls to get out of the house, Rachel runs back to get her mirror.

She lets the crowd carry her along to the river, and when the crowd stops and the ants swarm her, she tries to get into the Mwanza family's boat, but is pushed aside.

She drops her mirror and it smashes against the boat.

Answer: Tata Ndu

Tata Ndu offers to give the Prices money and animals in return for Rachel's hand in marriage, as he knows they are poor and thinks Rachel's pale skin would cheer up his other wives. Rachel is horrified at the thought of marrying the chief and pretends to be mentally ill, and Nathan and Eeben Axelroot hatch a plan to make Tata Ndu think Rachel and Axelroot are engaged. Rachel finds Axelroot repulsive, but he gives her cigarettes and offers to get her more, and she has her first kiss with him. He also tells her about the plan to assassinate Patrice Lumumba, though Rachel is oblivious to Congolese politics. Desperate to escape from Congo after the hunt incident and Ruth May's death, Rachel leaves the country with Axelroot and takes his surname, although Axelroot never actually marries her. He also repeatedly cheats on her.

Daniel DuPrée is a French ambassador and the husband of Rachel's friend Robine; he later leaves Robine for Rachel, but the marriage does not last. Rachel then marries Remy Fairley, but he dies. Rachel changes her name multiple times, from Rachel Price Axelroot to Rachel Axelroot DuPrée Fairley, before eventually going back to her maiden name.

Answer: South Africa

Axelroot takes Rachel to South Africa and they settle in Johannesburg, where Rachel learns to speak French and Afrikaans (she recites John 3:16 in Afrikaans). While Leah is living in poverty, Rachel is living a life of luxury under the apartheid regime. Axelroot has a security job in the gold mining industry, and Rachel befriends local white women, who teach her how to give parties and play bridge. Axelroot makes no secret of the fact that he thinks Rachel is ignorant, and he can tell her anything about politics because he knows she won't understand. Rachel later moves to Brazzaville in French Congo (now the Republic of the Congo), after her second husband is stationed there.

Answer: The Equatorial

Remy Fairley, Rachel's third husband, is the owner of the Equatorial and she takes over the hotel when he dies. The Equatorial is segregated - Rachel doesn't want Anatole coming to the hotel as the upstairs area is for whites only, and only white customers can afford to use the restaurant - and is popular with Europeans travelling through Brazzaville, mainly interpreters and people working in the oil business. Many tourists also came to stay at the Equatorial for the Rumble in the Jungle. Like Ruth May, Rachel keeps several pets.

While Leah has effectively gone native, Rachel has gone to the other extreme and become more racist, constantly worrying that her staff will steal from her and looking down on Leah for marrying an African man and having children with him. She is also politically more conservative than Leah.

Answer: Senegal

Leah comes up with the idea of the holiday as Anatole is nearing the end of his prison term, her sons are at school in Atlanta and she has to get a Land Rover (for which Orleanna raised the money, much to Rachel's jealousy) to Kinshasa. The plan is for Adah to accompany the Land Rover to Spain on a boat and then drive it to West Africa, with the Prices meeting up in Senegal and Rachel and Leah going on to Brazzaville while Adah returns home.

Rachel initially goes along with it as her friend Geoffrey has died and she needs a break, but the holiday turns sour as she and Leah repeatedly argue about politics (Rachel being vehemently anti-communist, while Leah is a supporter of Agostinho Neto). They also travel through Cameroon, Gabon and Benin, where they see the palace of Abomey, and Rachel is horrified at the bones decorating the walls. Leah also shares news of people from Kilanga, and tells Rachel about Nathan's death.

Answer: No

While Leah has four sons with Anatole, Rachel is unable to have children; she caught a venereal disease from Axelroot that made her infertile. In the epilogue, she is fifty years old and still running the Equatorial. While she misses the USA, she cannot return home as she has the hotel to look after and, more importantly, she knows she will never be able to fit in there because of her experiences in Africa.