Customer Reviews
Forced - By: RH, 02 Dec 2008 
This latest Anita Shreve novel seems to be attempting to repeat the recipe used for Strange Fits of Passion but it fails to dig deep enough. Again she looks at a situation from many personal perspectives - hearing voices from both before & after the event but the conclusion failed to deliver any new insight: We all know already that alcohol impairs our judgement & affairs can cause a lot of hurt.
I did think that perhaps the person filming the event who had not been revealed til the very end, would add a dramatic twist but it didn't.
An enjoyable read but largely disappointing.
Another great novel from Anita Shreve - By: kimbofo, 30 Nov 2008 
Reading a new Anita Shreve novel is always a delicious experience, not least because she's an author with an uncanny ability to spin an entertaining story out of an often simple premise. But what I like most about this prolific American author is her refusal to stick to a formula. While her novels may share similar themes -- usually love, loss & family relationshipsin a New England setting -- she plays around with narrative structure so no two books are alike.
In her latest, Testimony, she tells the story of a sex scandal at a private schoolin Vermont from the viewpoint of some 24 different characters. It sounds crazy to have so many voicesin the mix, but somehow,in Shreve's capable hands, the structure works without losing any narrative drive. But given the story is such a cracking one it would be almost impossible not to convey a sense of urgency & excitementin the telling of it.
The book opens with Mike Bordwin, the headmaster of Avery Academy, watching a video given to him by one of his administrative staff. The footage shows three male students from the school's basketball team having drunken sex with a much younger pupil. While Mike is shocked & repulsed, he is also desperate to contain the outfall so that it does not tarnish the school's sterling reputation. But we, the readers, are told at the outset that the explicit video produces ...
"... something very like radiation sickness throughout the school, reducing the value of an Avery education, destroying at least two marriages [...], ruining the futures of three students, and, most horrifying of all, resultingin a death."
As Mike launches an in-house investigation & gets at least two of the culprits -- the upstanding Rob Leicht & the less likable "ringleader" James Robles -- to sign written confessions, the girl's outraged parents call the police. Meanwhile the third culprit, Silas Quinney, a promising scholarship student with a talent for basketball, goes missing.
When a local newspaper reporter gets wind of the unfortunate events, Avery Academy suddenly attracts the kinds of unsavoury headlines that destroy reputations & ruin lives.
But, as ever with a Shreve novel, everything is not quite what it might seem. A steady drip, drip of information, delivered by different characters -- including some of the parents, other teachers, the students involved & police -- allows the reader to build up a picture of what really happened that fateful night. There are certain revelations which occur latein the book that gave this reviewer at least pause for thought. (As an aside, I'd caution you against reading the product description on Amazon.co.uk because it gives away some of these crucial plot spoilers -- thankfully I read it after I'd finished the book.)
While Testimony doesn't attempt to draw any moral conclusion about the scandal, nor does it attribute blame to any one party, it does throw up some interesting questions about the sexual conduct of teenagers (or, as one character puts it, "I thought it odd that no one at school thought to mention to any student that it was actually illegalin the state of Vermont for a senior boy to have intercourse with a freshman girl") & underage drinking. But it does show very clearly how "a single action can cause a life to veer offin a direction it was never meant to go" .
The social issues here, while important, aren't examinedin any great detail, because the author is more interestedin analysing how ordinary people react when thrust into extraordinary situations. For that reason alone, Anita Shreve fans will find much to likein this book and, if you're anything like me, you'll race through itin a day or two, desperate to find out what happensin the end.
Good, but in a subtle way - By: Brida, 31 Oct 2008 This is the first novel by Shreve that I have read. Perhaps because I came to it with no expectationsin regard to her writing style, I enjoyed it more than the previous reviewer to me. However, I can also see their point.
TESTIMONY is the story of a sex tape scandal at a boarding schoolin a relatively small communityin Vermont. The novel tells of how this tape & the contents on it has repercussions, not just for those who featuredin it, but also for others. Shreve splits the narrative between a few different characters who became involvedin the event & its aftermath, offering the reader different viewpionts on the same event. Andin some ways, this works well. But there are a few letdowns. As the other reviewer stated, Shreve tends to repeat various views again & again, rather than developing them further. However, I think the fact that you are never really given a 'proper' reason for the tape, actually adds something to what is behind this novel - that one stupid momentin a person's life can change the path they are to take & have consequences which they would never have imagined.
TESTIMONY is not the sort of book which grips you from the first page & keeps youin its thrall - I must admit that I had to persevere with it as it is not a page turnerin the sense that you are on the edge of your seat, desperately wanting to know what will happen next. This book, although quite good, is more subtle than that.
Good... but not outstanding - By: helen, 17 Oct 2008 I am quite a fan of Anita Shreve & I liked the idea of approaching the particular incident which the story focuses on from all sorts of different viewpoints. However, I think as the plot unfolds, too many already familiar views get churned out over & over again. We've already understood that Sienna is less than innocent, we know about Mike's feelings etc. The other thing I wasn't so keen on is a certain lazinessin the explanation of it all - nobody has really got an insight or a particular angle. And one doesn't really want to follow the author who seems to blame the poor mother for ruining her eighteen-year old son's life by having an affair. So allin all I'd say whilst it's a decent enough read, it left me somewhat disappointed.
