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It is very tempting to pick an option which has "were" because we have read so many times that if there is "IF...." use "were" in the sentence.

But this sentence is not a subjunctive mood.

The sentence says....

If X's memory had not been stirred by Y, he might never have been moved to write Z

I pick A.

B is wordy.
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4. If +past perfect+Perfect conditional.

The given sentence follows "if +past perfect+,+Perfect conditional."
Only A meets the criterion.
[/size]
Answer is A.[/quote]

I agree with you about the structure.
But not only A meets the criterion. B also follows the same structure.
Between A and B:
I guess that "by means of" is really awkward in B. Answer B is wordy compared to A.
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all choices are wrong. although A seems the best choice, it too is grammatically incorrect because 'he' is ambiguous. it cannot refer to marcel proust’s memory.
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Keeping aside the possessive noun + non-possessive pronoun bungling for a while, we may see that this belongs to the third conditional of "an if clause with a past perfect tense and the main clause with a conditional perfect tense"—“
"if Marcel Proust’s memory had not been stirred --- he might not have been moved’. So A and B survive. However, B is wordy with the unnecessary intrusion of the phrase ‘means of’
This is not subject to a subjunctive mood because the 'if clause' is not a hypothetical case; It has actually happened and is real. Therefore, there is no need to put it the unreal hypothetical mode.
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Hi Experts Can you please explain why B is discarded. I chose B as it shows that medicine has been used as a mean.
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Hello from the GMAT Club VerbalBot!

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