Anita Shreve
Little, Brown and Company
Release date: October 21, 2008
List price: $25.99 (320p)
ISBN: 978-0316059862
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Review - "Testimony"
Reviewer: Cori Vella
Rating:
Prior to this book, I hadn't read any of best-selling author Anita Shreve's work, and awhile I enjoyed reading Testimony, I most likely won't make a habit of it.
Testimony focuses on a sex scandal at Avery Academy, a New England boarding school. Three boys and one underage girl appear on a videotape that is handed over to the headmaster, Mike, who handles the situation badly. After forcing a written confession from the boys, legal problems mount — not only for those involved, but also for the headmaster, who sought and received unlawful confessions without notice to the boys' parents or legal teams.
The story focuses on the many lives that were changed (or unchanged) by the scandal. One boy loses his life. Two others lose their chance at university. Marriages are torn apart, affairs are conducted, young love is destroyed, and all the while, reporters are trolling the campus for more intimate details.
Like Brad Meltzer's The Book of Lies, the story unfolds layer by layer. The reader turns the pages to find out the next little piece. And again, like The Book of Lies, it crashes and burns in confusing narrative. Forget rotating between first- and third-person or past and present tense; Testimony uses them all, throwing them together in a vomited mess of indecision and confusion. Add to that the fact that there are roughly 20 viewpoint characters, and you've got yourself a pretty muddled book that would have benefited from heavy editing.
Now, I can handle a little bit of bad writing in exchange for a good story and good characters — but I can't handle a lot of bad writing. I am probably in the minority, seeing as that Shreve is a best-selling author and that this particular style of multiple viewpoints is growing increasingly popular, but I don't think the story, however good it is, is strong enough to stand on its own through the jumbled web of narrators.
For those who like getting into the minds of approximately 20 characters throughout a book's storyline, and for those who don't mind constantly rotating tenses and points of view, I'd say you'd enjoy this book immensely. For those who are more old-fashioned, like me, and like their authors to pick one tense and stick with it, take a pass.
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