Review – Testimony by Anita Shreve

Whilst I’ve spent countless hours shelving and re-ordering her titles, during my short and much romanticised book selling career, for one reason or another I’ve never quite gotten around to reading any Anita Shreve before now. And I have to come clean and confess that the reason I picked the title up in the first place is that upon scanning the back cover my  eye caught the words ‘New England boarding school’, and  for reasons largely unexplainable I find myself completely obsessed with books about about boarding schools, college and universties, or as literary criticism terms them, ‘campus novels’*.  Yep, mix together equal parts imposing  sandstone or gothic-y setting,  elitist and rigorous academic  standards that border on inhumane, stuffy starchy wool uniforms, the strange, misunderstood room-mate, much coming of age angsting, and your preferred dramatic story arc, and I’ll gladly crawl six kilometres in the snow to acquire a copy.  Possibly though, I’ve been reading Donna Tartt’s ‘The Secret History’ just one too many times now,  or clearly my brain chose to ignore the words ’sex scandal’, because as it turns out, students at Shreve’s New England ‘Academy’ are far too busy playing basketball and posting debaunched vidoes on You Tube to engage in anything even remotely ’study’ or esoterically related.

Set in the exclusive Avery Academy, located somewhere in New England, Testimony revolves around the fallout of  sex scandal that emerges via a videotape and You Tube.  Without giving too much away, the heart of this novel is an examination of the enormous impact foolish decisions and single moments of reckless behaviour  have – especially in regards to the central characters of Silas, ‘Sienna’, J. Dot, Rob and Mike – upon altering the trajectory of  lives.  Whilst such a description could lead you to think that this is a fitting 21st century cautionary tale, and on the surface it can certainly be read as one, I don’t really think that was  Shreve’s primary interest or intent in this novel .  Rather I would argue that Shreve in this book is interested in examining two main ideas (almost abstractly);  firstly, and as I mentioned above, the life long impact a moments poor decision making can have, especially in our technological driven and media saturated world, and secondly the way in which the fallout of such events transgress the boundaries of merely those involved and ripples throughout communities.

It was a small cassette, not much bigger than the palm of his hand, and when Mike thought about the terrible license and risk exhibited on the tape, as well as its resultant destructive power, it was as though the two-by-three plastic package had been radioactive.

I read somewhere that this has been quite a topical issue in the States of late, as a number of simliar scandals have broken throughout a number of well-respected schools. But being so far removed both geographically and educationally I don’t really think I’m in a position to comment on whether or not Shreve is exploring something at the forefront of social conciousness at the moment.  I can’t honestly say that I was terribly shocked by the particulars of the sex scandal, which in hindsight mildly alarmed me.  I’m not sure if my desensitised view is because Shreve doesn’t delve too graphically into the details, or whether it’s a product of growing up in a era of sex saturated media.

Shreve employs a really interesting and enjoyable way of illustrating this second point, the way in which the events of the school become those of the community,  by telling the story from the viewpoints of over twenty different characters, who through their own chapters detail for us a particular occurrence or aspect of the story.  I found this really disorientating for the first half a dozen chapters, but once I settled into in really enjoyed it.  Shreve is very good at maintaining a sense of mystery and tension through these chapters; she keeps the chapters short and sparse, giving you only the smallest scrap of the larger patchwork, per character, per chapter. I found myself regaularly huffing in good humoured annoyance at the authour and trying to speed my reading up in order to have my questions answered sooner, which with Shreve’s smooth and unencumbered prose was easy enough to do.

The multiplicity of voices in the narrative does mean that there isn’t a lot of psychological depth to the characters.  On occasion I found myself questioning the improbablity of some of the characters thoughts and actions, but having said that, they were fleeting concerns that didn’t rangle or amplify as the story progressed, and certaintly didn’t detract from the enjoyment of the story.  Given also that the story I think is more concerned with exploring ideas than deep character study, I think I’m perhaps asking for the book to do a little too much!

Whilst I wouldn’t say that it totally satsfied my campus novel craving, overall I thought it was an enjoyable and engaging read and would recommend it as perfect afternoon on the couch binge read material.  3/5

Testimony by Anita Shreve. Little Brown, 2008, 305 pages.

* If anyone has any titles they can recommend I’d love to hear them!