Monday 9 November 2009

Testimony by Anita Shreve

DATE PUBLISHED: 2008 DATE READ: November 2009 NOTES: Anita Shreve is a consummate story –teller and, once again, she comes up trumps with Testimony. It is a fairly straightforward story of a sex scandal in a private school in Vermont. It is told mainly from the points of view of numerous characters in the process of offering information to a university researcher some time after the event. Needless to say the reader is left uncertain as to which of the testimonies tell the whole truth and who chooses to embellish the facts to make themselves look better. She gets the tone of the differing statements just right. There are no amazing revelations but what we are left with is the disaster caused to so many lives by young people who were foolish rather than wicked. All very believable. A very quick and enjoyable read.

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