The authors explore ideas through techniques, structure etc. The author's attitude you can assume comes from the use of first person, structure, colloquial language and so on. An example of the author's attitude towards a character in 'The Simple gift', which is the novel i am studying is the protagonist is revealed as being a disliked, thieving, troubling character, but as responders, the author shapes us to feel sympathetic rather than antagonistic to him this tells me the author has a sympathetic attitude for the character.