Crouch studies Carlsen's progress in recent years and demonstrates how he learned lessons from previous setbacks, turned weaknesses into strengths, losses into draws, and draws into wins. By doing so Carlsen was able to elevate his play to a stratospheric level, but any aspiring chess player can use similar methods to improve their game.
And indeed, words like ‘childhood’, ‘family’ and ‘friend’ are conspicuously missing in Magnus Force, as are ‘television’, ‘girlfriend’ and ‘Liv Tyler’. Even the word ‘father’ is absent. All this means that Magnus Force tells only half the story, which is still a pity. As the secret of Carlsen’s superstar status isn’t his attractive playing style (Crouch makes that very clear), nor his outspoken views on (chess) politics - or anything else for that matter (except perhaps football), there must be an altogether different dimension to Magnus Carlsen’s success that isn’t revealed in Crouch’s book.
But what is it? Could it be that it’s precisely that absence of other aspects that make Carlsen such an attractive role model for chess? Looking at his predecessors, they all seem to have had ‘something else’ they were associated with: Kasparov with politics, Karpov with the Soviet regime, Fischer with his paranoia. Carlsen, by contrast, seems to be just chess - the most perfect embodiment of pure, uncomplicated chess to date. Which is why Magnus Force may not be limited because of its intended scope after all - but because of its subject.