Example

Read the following book review and notice the examples of factual language (unmarked, facts), and positive and negative comments (opinions):

• positive
• negative

Cormac McCarthy returns with two new novels

In 1992 Cormac McCarthy published his sixth novel, “All the Pretty Horses”. The first volume of what came to be known as “The Border Trilogy”, “All the Pretty Horses” told the story of a boy from Texas who rides to Mexico with a friend shortly after the death of his grandfather. Mr McCarthy’s earlier works had drawn on history, physics, and philosophy, and depicted almost biblical cruelty in an arid Western landscape. His language was as grand as it was dry; rarely did he write about women or domesticity. Mr McCarthy’s fans were devoted but limited in number.

“All the Pretty Horses” changed that. It established him as the heir to William Faulkner, Truman Capote, and other masters of the American Southern Gothic tradition. Mr McCarthy became a bestselling author and a household name. Thereafter he earned a whole new generation of readers. In 2006 he published “The Road”, a post-apocalyptic novel which followed a dying man and his young son; it won a Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into a film. In 2007 Javier Bardem starred in a screen version of “No Country for Old Men”, Mr McCarthy’s ninth novel. It won four Oscars, including Best Picture, and sealed the author’s critical and commercial success.

He was recently divorced at the time; for the next 15 years, he published no more fiction. Instead, he focused on working with the Santa Fe Institute, an arcane research centre in New Mexico, where he concentrated on his interests in science and human consciousness. The announcement earlier this year that Mr McCarthy was about to bring out not one but two novels in quick succession raised cheers. The author is now 89, and few thought he had another book in him.

The problem is that the new work is a mess. “The Passenger” begins well. A small jet has crashed and sunk into the Gulf of Mexico. The passengers are “sitting in their seats, their hair floating. Their mouths open, their eyes devoid of speculation.” The pilot’s flight bag is missing, as is a panel from the instrumentation. One of the passengers cannot be accounted for.

A salvage diver considers the job at hand. He is the son of a man who worked with Robert Oppenheimer to develop the nuclear bomb. He is afraid of the deep and in love with his sister, who has been dead for ten years. Not surprisingly, his musings are both random and complicated.

The story of the watery grave is soon abandoned as the salvage diver heads landward to make a long road trip to visit his grandmother. Along the way, the book meanders through string theory, the founding of quantum mechanics, Arthur Schopenhauer’s philosophy and whether God exists. There is the odd distraction about a hoard of gold coins and the theft of a rare 16th-century Italian violin.

Mr McCarthy’s thirst for language is unquenched, and the literary vista of his sentences stretches out towards the horizon. Yet the story barely hangs together. “Stella Maris”, a 200-page coda, inexplicably published as a separate book six weeks after the first, is the transcript of a conversation between two people: the diver’s sister (and obsessive love interest), a former mathematician who is now a paranoid schizophrenic in a hospital in Wisconsin, and her doctor. It adds little clarity to the whole enterprise, and much confusion. Most of the time Mr McCarthy forgoes quotation marks; indeed, he avoids punctuation in general. Many readers will be bewildered.

Mr McCarthy’s publishers have packaged the two volumes into a handsome set in time for the festive season. In America, Knopf has elegantly bedecked the books in sunset gold and underwater blue; Picador, its British equivalent, is releasing a “beautiful, limited-edition slipcase”. These efforts could be seen as a fetching tribute to the elderly author. More likely, given the hefty price tag of $56, or £50, they will be perceived as an experiment in shameless commercial cynicism.

(www.economist.com, Nov 19, 2022)

Tasks

The following text contains both positive and negative comments. Look at the paragraphs and decide whether or not they are positive or negative. Mark the parts of the text which give you this information.

• positive
• negative

Cormac McCarthy returns with two new novels

1) William Boyd’s new novel is a rollicking tale of adventure

William Boyd’s extensive back catalogue includes several “whole-life” stories, as he calls them, of which the best-known is “Any Human Heart” (published in 2002). His 17th and latest novel is another cradle-to-grave epic. In “The Romantic”, a flawed yet captivating protagonist again makes his way through the world, interacting with both factual and fictional figures and weathering personal tribulations and historical upheavals.

This time around, the hero’s life arcs across the 19th century. Cashel Greville Ross is born in 1799, orphaned and brought up in County Cork by his aunt—or so he is led to believe. When he learns the truth of his origins he enlists as a soldier, narrowly escaping the battle of Waterloo with his life. Later, as an officer in the colonial Madras Army, his morality is tested when an engagement with restless locals in Ceylon turns into a massacre.

Back in civilian life, Cashel begins touring Europe with a view to writing a travel book. In Pisa he befriends the Romantic poets, going shooting with Byron (“a warrior without an enemy”) and sailing with Shelley. In Ravenna he embarks on an all-consuming love affair with Raphaella, a married contessa, until a secret from her past comes to light. And in London, he enjoys literary fame—until he is swindled by his publisher and sent to a debtors’ prison.

Again and again, Cashel’s streaks of luck or contentment are jeopardised by cruel twists of fate. His expedition to discover the source of the Nile results in a rival stealing his glory. A late-career stint as a diplomat in Trieste comes to a shocking end when he realises that he has been made an unwitting middleman in a smuggling racket. Cashel devises plans to get even with those who double-crossed him. Eventually, though, his determination to settle scores is supplanted by a yearning to track down Raphaella after decades of separation. But is seeing out his days with her “the coda that his life was waiting for?”

Not every stage of Cashel’s life is equally engaging. But most are packed with passion, adventure, suspense, comic interludes and a range of colourful characters. The war scenes are visceral (“lancers were shredded, as if they were carrots in a grater or turnips in a cutter”), and a sense of urgency powers Cashel’s mission to win back his lost love. The rollicking work of a masterful storyteller, “The Romantic” is both a vivid portrait of a life and a sweeping panorama of an age.

(www.economist.com, Oct 8, 2022)

2) Ian McEwan’s new novel is the story of a single life

In recent years Ian McEwan’s fiction has been playful and inventive. “Nutshell” (published in 2016) was an audacious restyling of “Hamlet” that featured as its narrator a garrulous, erudite unborn child. “Machines Like Me” (2019) explored the brave new world of artificial intelligence within a counterfactual past. And the novella “The Cockroach” (2019), written as a response to Brexit, repurposed Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” to satirise the state of a divided nation.

Mr McEwan’s latest novel returns to more traditional fictional territory. This is not to say that “Lessons” is devoid of big ideas and artistic risks. Indeed, in some respects it may be the author’s most ambitious work to date. Well over 400 pages long, and tracking the course of a single life, it is a dense yet deeply absorbing book.

One day in 1986 Roland Baines has an “insomniac memory” of a formative experience at boarding school: during a piano lesson, his teacher, Miriam, kissed him on the lips. Back in the present, Roland’s waking thoughts continue to be dominated by the reckless act of another woman—his wife, Alissa—and the needs of his infant son. A week earlier Alissa vanished, leaving him holding the baby, fielding a detective’s questions and harbouring “the untidy unwashed feeling of being a suspect”.

From here, the novel charts Roland’s progress through the years. Some sections are devoted to his past, in particular his sentimental education from Miriam and his subsequent failure at school. Unlike his absent wife, who achieves international renown as a novelist, much of Roland’s adult life consists of missed opportunities and squandered potential. Instead of making a career as a poet or a concert pianist, he ekes out a living writing “wised-up doggerel” for greetings cards and playing the piano in lounge bars.

Nevertheless, he finds comfort and stimulation in books, music, family, friends and a late-flowering love affair. At one point he believes he has grasped the way to steer his life smoothly: “Make a choice, act! That’s the lesson.” Fate, though, may not be finished with him yet.

Mr McEwan’s account of his protagonist’s long, “shapeless existence” could have made for a rambling, directionless novel. In places it feels episodic, reading like a catalogue of births, deaths, marriages, relationships and reunions (or “reckonings”). Yet Roland emerges as a vivid and sympathetic creation. He feels all the more real when Mr McEwan shows how his life is affected by global upheavals, from the Cuban missile crisis to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the spread of covid-19.

“How easy it was to drift through an unchosen life, in a succession of reactions to events,” writes Mr McEwan. Roland’s journey is not easy, but the dramatic evocation of his struggles and setbacks means readers will follow him every step of the way.

(www.economist.com, Sept 10, 2022)