Testimony by Anita Shreve Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Testimony
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: "The consequences of that one night have been catastrophic."
Summary: 5 Stars
A firestorm erupts when a dormitory parent confiscates a tape in which three boys engage in intimate acts with a fourteen-year-old girl at a private school. The young people who appear in the tape attend Avery Academy in Vermont. Anita Shreve's "Testimony" examines this incident from every possible angle, using a Rashomon-like approach. She demonstrates how difficult it is to learn the truth when various witnesses offer conflicting opinions about what happened and who should bear the responsibility.
Mike Bordwin, the headmaster of Avery Academy, is shocked when he views the tape and sees Robert Leicht, and Silas Quinney, both eighteen, and James Robles, nineteen, behaving inappropriately with a pretty young freshman after an evening of heavy drinking. The author provides many perspectives besides Bordwin's, including those of the participants, the parents, Silas's girlfriend, a newspaper reporter, a roommate of the victim, a police officer, a cafeteria worker, an ER nurse, the dean of students, and a law professor. It soon becomes apparent that the story changes according to who tells it, and that there is plenty of blame to go around.
Using a straightforward and powerful prose style, Anita Shreve explores a number of thought-provoking and timely themes: The abuse of alcohol among young people is "starting at an earlier age and [is] both more habitual and more intense that it had been just a decade before"; students who attend private schools and who are athletically talented may behave recklessly because they feel "privileged"; when reporters grab hold of a scandalous story, they often transform a human tragedy into a media circus; our misdeeds may destroy not only our lives but also those of our friends and family. "Testimony" is a searing and powerful indictment of a society that, in many ways, has lost its moral compass, and for that, everyone pays a price.
Book Review: "There are Consequences for our Actions"
Summary: 5 Stars
Once again, Anita Shreve delivers. Her latest book is about a small private school in Vermont. It is also about the people (students,parents,teachers,headmaster) and all the others of this small community.
The incident that gets the ball rolling starts with a tape dropped off to the headmaster of the school. The tape is of three boys (18 and 19 Yrs. old) and one 14 year old girl engaging in sex in what seems to be a very drunken state, in the boys dorm room.
The story is told by all the participants and their families. Each chapter is narrated by one of these people. It is at this point, as you get much further into the book that you learn there is much more to this very sad and disturbing story. When one bad decision is made and discovered the dominos begin to fall and the consequences of this are horrific and unfortunate.
There is also a very good chapter at the end of the book that puts the whole incident into a different light. To say more would spoil the whole thing. If you have enjoyed Anita Shreve in the past, don't miss this one, it is fantastic!!!!
Book Review: 'Testimony'...A well-written and entertaining book!
Summary: 4 Stars
A scandalous sex tape involving several boys and an underage girl finds its way into the hands of Avery Academy's headmaster.
What Mike Bordwin does about this shocking and damaging tape and how he confronts those involved, actually magnifies the effects of this teen-aged mischief.
The community is shocked and outraged at the possibility of this type of thing happening at the venerated boarding school.
Parents are already paying a high price for their children to have a better, more upstanding education; this had to be some horrible mistake, just a huge misunderstanding!
As the story unfolds, the students called in to be questioned and...
**Please follow the link to read the whole review:
http://bookreviewsbybobbie.wordpress.com/2008/11/20/book-review-of-testimony/
Book Review: (3.5) "And it was then that the word containment entered his mind."
Summary: 4 Stars
A small private academy in Vermont. A shocking tape that has hit the internet, featuring three male students and one fourteen-year-old female student. It is devastating when the headmaster at Avery Academy learns of the existence of the tape, but when the national media converges on the campus, secrets are exposed, careers ruined and marriages sundered in the aftermath of the press's spotlight. Writing from the perspectives of various individuals, the headmaster, the four students and affected family members, Shreve examines the damage as it unfolds, from one family to another, from one shattered life to another.
It is not surprising that even this entitled, pristine campus is rampant with alcohol abuse, the students able to purchase party supplies from a network of willing vendors on campus, an exorbitant markup making the risk worthwhile. Given the number of well-heeled students attending Avery, most college-bound, party life is at least as important as academics and sports. To some of the talented student's advantage, Avery Academy's basketball team is stellar, a few young men on the cusp of promising college careers. Of the three boys on the tape, Rob, J.Dot and Silas, a local boy, it is Silas whose future looms brightest. And it is Silas who bears the brunt of the tragic consequences. But it is the nature of random behavior and chance that blights the futures of these three young men, their accuser quickly moving on with her life, virtually unscarred by the adventure.
Shreve's storytelling ability is impressive, nimbly tackling a number of points of view, from reporter, to cafeteria worker. But it is the core characters that suffer the consequences of the boys' excesses and the girl's cooperation. The novel deftly explores cause and effect, a small but powerful tragedy that capture's a town's rapt attention and outrage, their community overrun with curious outsiders. Husbands and wives are left to ponder their sons' intemperate decisions, the frail constructions of marriage contracts hiding a multitude of broken dreams and the impossibility of quashing an explosive story. Another news cycle and the public's curiosity moves on, those caught in Avery's scandal, the headmaster, the parents and their sons left to piece together fractured lives that will never be the same. Luan Gaines/ 2008.