confusing SC

[vinshu]

Agatha Christie's travels with her archaeologist husband inspired her to write several mystery novels; travelers to Egypt can still stay at the Old Cataract Hotel, the model for the hotel in one of Christie's most famous books.

A. Agatha Christie's travels with her archaeologist husband inspired her to write several mystery novels

B. Agatha Christie used her travels with her archaeologist husband to inspire several mystery novels

C. Because her husband was an archaeologist, Agatha Christie was able to use their travels as inspiration for several of her mystery novels

D. Together with her archaeologist husband, Agatha Christie was inspired to incorporate their travel into several of her mystery novels

E. Agatha Christie's travels with her archaeologist husband served as inspiration for several of her mystery novels

I am not too convinced with the official answer. [/url]

[Stuart@KaplanGMAT]

Agatha Christie's travels with her archaeologist husband inspired her to write several mystery novels; travelers to Egypt can still stay at the Old Cataract Hotel, the model for the hotel in one of Christie's most famous books.

A. Agatha Christie's travels with her archaeologist husband inspired her to write several mystery novels

B. Agatha Christie used her travels with her archaeologist husband to inspire several mystery novels

C. Because her husband was an archaeologist, Agatha Christie was able to use their travels as inspiration for several of her mystery novels

D. Together with her archaeologist husband, Agatha Christie was inspired to incorporate their travel into several of her mystery novels

E. Agatha Christie's travels with her archaeologist husband served as inspiration for several of her mystery novels

I am not too convinced with the official answer. [/url]

This is definitely a tricky one, since A and E are both grammatically correct and stylistically fine. Our final decision comes down to preserving the author's intended meaning, since A and E are subtly different.

In (A), her travels inspired her to write the novels; in other words, they were they reason why she decided to write the novels at all.

In (E), her travels served as inspiration for the novels; in other words, she incorporated what she saw while travelling into her books.

In a vacuum, we have no way to tell what the author of the sentence means, so if the sentence ended at the semicolon, we'd have to go with (A), the original.

However, we're not looking at that first clause in a vacuum - we have the second clause (post semicolon) to help us out.

In the second clause, the author notes that part of one of her books was modelled on what she saw during her travels. Based on that, we can reasonably conclude that the author's intended meaning is expressed in (E), not (A), making (E) the best choice.

This is a really tough question (although a very easy one to narrow down to A/E) - what's the source? We have to make quite a deep inference about the author's intended meaning to arrive at (E) over (A), which is rare on the actual GMAT.

[vinshu]

tahnk you stuart...

OA is E...and the source is MGMAT CAT. but my doubt is that the pronoun 'her' in first sentence refers to a possessive
'Agatha Christie's'. Is it alright? Can her sensibly refer back to Christie's. PLease clarify.
thanking you in advance.