Testimony by Anita Shreve
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Book Reviews of Testimony
Book Review: As stimulating as it is sad
Summary: 5 Stars
There's a reason we love police procedurals and courtroom dramas: they invite readers to plunge in, giving us a chance to look at the evidence, hear the witnesses and guess at what it all means. As the pieces accumulate, little by little a picture of the truth --- or of a truth --- emerges. For nail-biting tension, there's nothing to beat this sort of slow, tantalizing buildup.
Although TESTIMONY isn't exactly a mystery, its author, Anita Shreve --- a novelist so prolific that her consistency verges on the miraculous --- is a master of suspense. Her work is consistently fresh, intelligent and gripping, and she never fails to be in control of her material, which in this instance concerns a sexual assault case at the fictional Avery Academy, an upper-crust prep school in Vermont. One night after a dance, three boys, star basketball players, have sex with a 14-year-old girl. All four kids are very drunk. And there is a videotape.
TESTIMONY consists of just that: not transcripts from a court of law, but witness statements that dig into every nook and cranny of the crime (if it was a crime). Each chapter is from a different person's perspective, ranging from Mike, the school's headmaster, to the perpetrators themselves, the girl in question (it's uncertain whether she is seductress or victim, or both) and the beleaguered parents. Some pieces of evidence are in the form of letters, others are personal reminiscences; several are from interviews conducted a few years later by an academic researcher investigating "alcohol and the adolescent male." Together, jigsaw-puzzle-like, these voices tell us the story and its tragic denouement.
Although there are also accounts from more peripheral characters --- policemen, roommates, teammates, a worker in the Avery dining hall --- the students' relationships with their parents, as well as with quasi-parental figures like teachers or headmasters, are the most central. I think that any parent reading it (most likely a mother) will identify powerfully with the surprise and shock of these adults as they confront the sex, drugs and lies of their children's double lives.
Two of the three boys, you see, have always seemed like exemplary young men --- high morals, fine minds, all that --- so their behavior is completely out of character. They ruin themselves with one... what? Fit of anger and rebellion? Alcoholic frenzy? Stupid mistake? It's to Shreve's credit that she doesn't sew her ending into a neatly stitched explanation or indictment. Instead, efforts to contain the scandal vie with attempts to expose it, and clarity is lost in a swirl of rage, confusion and grief. Ambiguity is what TESTIMONY is all about.
Of the families, the one belonging to Silas, a local scholarship boy, is the most interesting. His father is a farmer, plain-spoken and radiating grim integrity (he never trusted Avery in the first place); his mother yearns for something more meaningful for herself and her son; and the boy himself is a thoughtful kid, ethical almost to a fault. In love with Noelle, a beautiful cellist, he is racked with self-loathing about what the incident will mean to their future, fearful that she will forgive him but never forget.
Some of the other characters are more clichéd --- the girl, Sienna, is portrayed as a sleazy little opportunist who lacks sensitivity or intelligence. But maybe Shreve is reminding us that it isn't just virtuous, reserved girls like Noelle who need protection.
And it isn't just jaded, amoral boys who take sexual advantage. In fact, there is nothing in the novel to suggest, reassuringly, that if teachers and parents paid attention and kids were raised properly, incidents like this would never happen. In that sense, Shreve's book ends rather bleakly, for how can institutions protect the innocent and nail the guilty when the line between the two is so murky?
But TESTIMONY is as stimulating as it is sad. A fascinating exercise in storytelling from multiple points of view --- with no editorializing from a third-person narrator --- it makes witnesses of its readers and challenges us to make up our own minds about what is true or false, good or bad. A vigorous and provocative book.
--- Reviewed by Kathy Weissman
Book Review: One of the Best from Shreve in Years!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
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 passionate desires can have far-reaching effects that can change lives forever.
Told from multiple points of view (I counted 20) in less talented hands the narration could get confusing. But with Shreve, it did not. Perhaps that was because with over a dozen of these narrators we only hear from them once or twice.
However the story essentially belongs to three people: Mike, the headmaster of the school who we get to know the best, and Silas and Noelle, the two star-crossed lovers; Silas the basketball star, the local boy made good, son of average farmers from the town of Avery and Noelle, the talented musician destined for Julliard. As the story of the events of that one evening of sex and alcohol unfolds it is becomes clear that Silas stands to lose it all. But what sets in place such behavior uncharacteristic of the normally mild-mannered youth is at the crux of the rest of the story.
A graphic beginning describes the events of that tragic evening; and this is so graphic that it could tend to turn off some readers, readers who may be unfamiliar with Shreve's work. But those who have come to know and trust Shreve as an author will be compelled to keep reading and be certainly glad they did as the events unfold, a bit at a time, through the voices of not only Mike, Silas, and Noelle, but parents, classmates, and the other students involved in the scandal. We also hear from a reporter who eventually wins the Pulitzer for his reporting of the events.
However as the story develops, readers see that the scandal is only the tip of the iceberg for a greater tragedy that will even more deeply affect those involved.
This is Shreve at her best. She tells a compelling story so eloquently that is one of those deemed "unputdownable" -- be sure to start this one early in the day so you will have plenty of time to finish as once you begin it, you will not be able to stop turning the pages.
Book Review: "Prep" meets "Breaking Her Fall" -- and it really works
Summary: 5 Stars
On the one hand, I can't necessarily convince myself that the world needs another book about prep school culture run amok. On the other, by the time I finished Testimony by Anita Shreve, I did feel that this entry adds something new to the canon. For those who read the same kinds of novels I do, think Prep meets Breaking Her Fall and you'll have an inkling of what goes on in this story about a questionable situation that develops one cold winter night at a fictional prep school in rural Vermont. And if you happen to live in Massachusetts, as both I and author Anita Shreve do, you might recognize additional elements from a real-life event that occurred at a prep school in our state a couple of years ago. Is it straightforward rape when a precocious freshman coerces most of the basketball team's (highly inebriated) starting lineup into a dorm room after a school dance? On the other hand, can a 14-year-old really be guilty of seduction when the other parties are all at least four years older than her (and, much to their legal hardship, technically adults)?
What made this story stand out for me is the multiple-narrator format. Not original, but particularly well-done here. Each of the characters has an authentically different voice; we would be able to tell who was talking within the first two or three sentences even if their names didn't title their respective chapters, and some of their voices tell so much more about them than any third-person description could. Shreve gives stage time not only to the primary characters - the girl (do we call her a victim? We're not sure), the boys, the headmaster, the wronged girlfriend - but to several minor characters as well: the girl's naïve and bewildered roommate, each boy's mother, teachers, a cafeteria worker, a townie, a reporter who uncovers the story. The case is a classic ripple-effect story, and we hear from each of these characters just how the ripples - to mix metaphors - punctured their lives. The other highly commendable element is that there is a mystery but it is trivial, added almost for irony, as if Shreve is saying "I know another author who wrote this kind of novel would implant a riddle, so here it is." When the question of who the unnamed fourth boy in the room was gets answered, it turns out not to matter much, though it does tell us something about the other characters that they chose to preserve his anonymity, and why.
Anita Shreve worked with this topic as well as I think anyone could. The prep school setting is portrayed with veracity and the kids' voices are engaging. True, I might be learning more about the world if I were reading, say, a novel about life in Afghanistan under the Taliban or in Sierra Leone during that country's civil war. But even though in this case I stuck to a familiar setting, I learned something about people, and voices, and perspectives. Yes, well worth the time I spent reading it.
Book Review: From S. Krishna's Books
Summary: 5 Stars
Testimony is a powerful novel that that weaves an intricate story of truth and consequences. It is told after-the-fact through the eyes of multiple people involved in the scandal. The title is actually a description of the book, as each of these people are giving testimony as to what happened that fateful night and how it affected them. This method provides mere glimpses into multiple lives, but allows for a more sophisticated understanding of how the consequences of the actions of a few individuals affected a wide range of people.
Because that's what this book is about - consequences. What are the consequences of a single action? How much do mistakes cost? How much should they cost? Are there crimes for which a person should pay his or her entire life? But it also delves deeper into the psyche than it seems. Was it just the fault of the boys on the tape? What about the girl, was she at fault? What about the circumstances surrounding each of the boys? If one of them was having a hard time at home, was the fact that he made a poor choice the fault of his home life?
I think the most delicate part of Testimony, and the part that will be the most discussed in book clubs and such, is whether the girl was at fault. It is clear from her portrayal in the novel that she is no innocent and knew what she was doing. At the same time, legally, the boys were responsible for their actions. It is a heinous and incredibly awkward thing to read about, and engenders internal conflict within the reader - whose side am I on? Is it really even a matter of sides, or is the whole thing so unthinkable that it just doesn't matter? It really provides fodder for thought and discussion.
This is a serious subject and one that is becoming all the more relevant as children are increasingly eager to become adults at younger and younger ages. There was one point made in Testimony that I thought was incredibly interesting. It was towards the very end, but is not any kind of a spoiler. One of the characters says, "I don't believe any of us...gave a single thought to the age difference. We knew there was a disparity, of course, but I think because we were all part of the same community, allowed to attend the same dances, even encouraged to attend the same dances, it never occurred to us that one girl might be off-limits while another wasn't." Of course, this is no excuse, but it does present an interesting point that I have never considered. It is definitely a book worth reading. I especially recommend it to book clubs because this is a book that will produce a lot of discussion.
4 and a half stars rounded up to 5
Book Review: Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful....
Summary: 5 Stars
Living, as we do, in an age of bewildering complexity where ambiguity is the norm not the exception, many if not all of us hunger for simplicity, for stark rights and wrongs, for stories that make sense. Happily Anita Shreve is not in the business of supplying those things. Rather she is an author of great intelligence and acute sensitivity with an almost Biblical sense of the peril in which all humans were put when Eve tore the apple from the tree, took a bite, and handed it to Adam. Impressive though mankind may be, making wise decisions regarding our behavior and our response to the tests of life, are not among our strong points. Into this mess jumps Anita and I never fail to be stunned by the ways in which she interprets what the Bible calls, Time & Unforeseen Circumstance.
Testimony stands almost by itself as a novel of such stunning complexity and clarity that we are allowed to truly "experience" the mind numbing contradictions faced by us all these days. Amidst all the tired cliches pertaining to prep schools and the spoiled children of the upper middle class it is easy to read a headline screaming about "entitlement" and the "arrogance of wealth, power and privilege" and reach for a length of rope with a funny looking loop on the end. Yet even as we tighten the knot and heave the free end over a tree limb Anita begins painting another one of her almost Picasso like cubist portraits of the characters and events that people her novels. Seen from a multitude of angles and perspectives what at first seems like a straight forward and clear cut tale little by little morphs into an all revealing portrait of the complexities of character and event of which Real Life is Really made up.
Shreve's stories have no surplus of happy formulaic endings and I can count the number of times I've turned the last page and instantly known how I feel about the novel on the absent fingers of a one armed bandit who lives next door. But to say, to even think for a single moment, that Testimony has no lesson to teach or no message to ponder as other reviewers have suggested on this thread is so patently absurd as to defy belief!
All I can say to those saying those things is Read It Again Sam, Read It Again!
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