Testimony (Anita Shreve)

This was a disappointment for me as one who has enjoyed Anita Shreve in the past, especially Fortune's Rocks. This book could have been subtitled, "Everything that could possibly go wrong will go wrong." Are there any redeeming qualities in anyone here? I felt the chapters devoted solely to odd/ancillary characters was contrived and I wished for more of an interwoven story line here. I could make no sense of any of it and I suppose this was the intent of the author, but I did not like it.

I spent 4 years at a boarding school in upstate NY in the late 1950's and I'm faculty at a state university. Tales of impropriety certainly are of considerable interest to me. In Shreve's novel we see boarding school faculty (the headmaster and his wife, etc), students, parents, and others, all caught up in a scandal that the headmaster Bordwin had hoped could be handled in-house. Drinking, drugs, and sex (untaped sex, that is, not something taped and posted on YouTube) are commonplace and apparently are not taken very seriously by anyone. In my halcyon days, such as they were, at boarding school, drugs were "hippie stuff", smoking cigarettes in unauthorized places at unauthorized times resulted in suspension, and alcohol got you a permanent boot. The headmaster was an old English type, and you sometimes got the idea that caning had appeal for him, and that he wished caning were an option. If he had been headmaster at Avery Academy there would probably have been very few students... Read more

Anita Shreve never plays it safe with her books and her latest, Testimony, is no exception. Avery Academy is a small private school in Vermont. Everyone who attends has been carefully screened and selected to attend. From the rich young freshmen to the athletic seniors tapped for college play; no one attends Avery Academy by chance. But for Avery Academy, all is not as it seems from outside its gates. Parties, which include alcohol and drugs, still occur and kids still get in trouble. This sets the scene for a horrible sex scandal from which no one will come out unscathed, not the students, not the parents, not the headmaster of the school; and not even the citizens of the town of Avery who don't even usually pay too much attention to what goes on behind the hallowed gates up on the hill just out of town. Parents find that even though they pay for the best education for their children, send them to the best schools available, they still can't protect them. Adults find that passio... Read more

I have been an Anita Shreve fan for a long time, and have read all of her books. When I sat down with her latest book "Testimony", I was totally blown away. I was not able to go to bed without finishing it. The story begins after a party at an exclusive New England prep school. Three drunken, popular basketball players, have sex with a female student who is only 14. A tape of the incident turns up, and the headmaster is hesitant to make the incident public. The story is revealed and everyone is pointing to someone else, and everyone is trying to determine, who is to blame? The book was just about 300 pages, written in short chapters with lots of white space left on the pages. The story is told from about 20 alternating points of view. Who is telling the truth, and who is lying? When are you old enough to know better? And how many lives can be destroyed by one moment? One thing I really liked was that the characters were well developed and sympathetic(even the flawed ones). I ... Read more

I am a die hard fan of Ms. Shreve and as soon as a new book is released I purchase it without knowing the story line. However, this one isn't even close to being one of her better writes . If you've read all her other novels then you just may agree . another reviewer said it best, " they were all whiney " , it took me 2/3 of the book to even have a flicker of wanting to finish it which would be a first for me when reading Ms. Shreve , even when one of her offerings isn't first class. Oh well, another book gets donated to my Local library . But, as usual when her next book is published, I'll be there waiting to pay because she has a long history of writing novels that have you up all night wanting to know, what happens next . Come on Ms. Shreve, take your time on the next book ...give your fans the first rate writing which we are use to seeing from you : )