No Place to Park - Page 151

C2 Proficiency · Multiple Choice Reading · Ready for C2 Proficiency Student's Book, Macmillan

You are going to read an extract from the short story No Place to Park by Alexander McCall Smith. For questions 1–6, choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which you think fits best according to the text.

It started as a challenge, the unforeseen outcome of an absurd conversation at a writers' festival in Western Australia. There was the usual panel on stage, and an audience made up of the sort of people who frequent crime panels – predominantly women, with a sprinkling of men, highly educated, highly literate, and highly imaginative. They were a group bound together by a fascination with the gory details of behaviours in which they themselves would never engage. These people would never commit murder, not in their wildest dreams. Nor would they mix with people who did such things, no matter how fascinating they might find their company on the page. But they loved to read about murder, about the sudden, violent termination of human life, and of how it was done. The panel was discussing realism in crime fiction. Two practitioners of the art, writers of well-received policiers, had been pitted against the literary critic of a local paper. The critic, who read very little of such fiction expressed the view that there was a surfeit of realistic gore in the contemporary mystery. 'Look at the average crime novel these days,' he pointed out, stabbing at the air with an accusing finger. 'Look at the body count. Look at the compulsory autopsy scenes. Some actually start with the autopsy, would you believe it! The autopsy room, so familiar, so comforting! Organs are extracted and weighed, wounds examined for angle-of-entry, and it's all so ... well, it's all so graphic.' He paused. From the audience came a brief outbreak of laughter. It could not be graphic enough for them. The critic warmed to his theme. 'But there are crimes other than murder, aren't there? There's fraud and theft and extortion. There's tax evasion, for heaven's sake! And yet all we read about in books of this genre is murder. Murder, murder.' He paused, then looked accusingly at the two authors beside him. 'Why not write about more mundane offences? Why not write about things that actually happen? Murder's very rare, you know. Not that one would think so to read your books.' One of the authors grinned at the audience. 'Weak stomach,' he said, gesturing to the critic. 'Can't take it.' The audience laughed. They had no difficulty taking it. 'Seriously, though,' said the critic. 'How about it? How about a realistic crime novel dealing with something day-to-day, some commonplace low-level offence.' 'Such as?' asked one of the authors. The critic waved a hand in the air. 'Oh, anything,' he said lightly. 'Parking violations, perhaps. Those happen all the time.' Everybody joined in the laughter, even the critic. 'Go on,' he said to the authors. 'Why don't one of you people do something like that? Give up murder. Get real. Start a new genre.' One of the authors, George Harris, a successful crime writer from Perth, stared at him. He had been laughing, but now he looked thoughtful. Whenever he went surfing nowadays, thoughts of what might be in the water beneath him were always on his mind, nagging fears, repressed but still there, somewhere below the surface. Eight months earlier somebody whom he knew, although only vaguely, had been taken by a great white within a stone's throw of the edge of the beach. The incident had brought home to him the fact that surfing in Australia had its perils and it had also given him an idea for his next book. The plot would involve rivalry amongst surfers which would lead to one surfer planning to dispose of another. And what better way to do so than to fake a shark attack? The killing strike would be administered from below the waves by a large knife which the murderer had specially made in his garage. The knife would have a number of serrations along the edge, each carefully honed to the shape of a shark's tooth, in order to leave just the right wounds for the coroner to come to the inevitable conclusion – death by shark attack. It was a good plot, even if it would not make comfortable reading for surfers, or comfortable writing, for that matter, for a crime novelist who also happened to be a surfer. He had barely started this new novel, this surfing story, and was tempted to give it up. He had once before persisted with a book his heart was not in, and he had wasted eight months in the gestation of something that did not work and that had to be abandoned. Determined not to make the same mistake again, he had been open to new ideas when the critic at the panel had made his comments. The suggestion that a crime novel should concern itself with something as minor as illegal parking had been made in jest, of course, but when one thought about it, why not?

Their perceptive nature is evident in how they conduct themselves.

They tend to have an overblown opinion of their own intellectuality.

Their lives are a far cry from those portrayed in such novels.

They prefer to socialise with like-minded people at literary events.

What does the writer suggest about the average reader of crime fiction?

The exchange has an element of confrontation.

It is essentially a lesson in effective debate.

The conversation is full of thoughtful speculation.

It is basically one of mutual disrespect.

How is the communication between the critic and the writers depicted?

The market is completely saturated with them.

Readers tend to prefer one particular setting over others.

They have lost all sense of perspective.

Many of the characters lack credibility.

What point is the critic trying to make about crime novels?

It may fail to provide much scope for his fertile imagination.

The subject matter is too close to home.

He is unclear as to who the target audience would be.

He thinks the storyline might be too far-fetched.

Why might George be reluctant to actually write his new book?

He enjoys the thrills associated with rising to a challenge.

The extent of his literary output has declined in recent years.

His lifestyle would remove the need for extensive research.

It resonates with something that has been on his mind.

What makes George take the critic's suggestion seriously?

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