Reviews
Testimony
Anita Shreve
Little Brown, 307pp
Anita Shreve is the author of many disparate books about ordinary life lived intensely. Testimony centres on a single event in an exclusive private school in New England which has a devastating fall out for all those involved. The event, caught on home video and circulated via the internet, is an illegal drink and sex party involving three older boys and a much younger (albeit willing) girl. In the subsequent scandal, careers, marriages, reputations and ultimately lives are lost.
Shreve has written a tragedy for a post-modern world. She does not ascribe the fateful event and its consequences either to the hand of a punishing God nor to that of a meddling Satan. Nor does she trace any protagonist’s downfall to a character flaw with which they have offended the gods as classical Greek tragedy might. Instead, in common with many of her previous works, she describes the way in which many chance events accumulate to force a crisis. The reader may find him/herself wishing to apportion blame but the author does not allow the full weight of responsibility to rest anywhere. Some of the characters are feckless, some conniving, but some are good people, momentarily caught in the wrong.
Shreve does not work from within a traditional Christian cosmology, but her standpoint is one which Christians can learn from. We might see that in this fallen world we inhabit, people’s moral choices do not necessarily lead to the outcomes they desire.
Responsibility is mitigated and justice elusive. Apportioning blame can therefore be destructive, as when, in Testimony the school’s talented basketball coach gets dismissed even though he had no hand at all in the events of the night in question. This particular detail, and a number of others were based on real-life scandals which rocked several American colleges and which Shreve says left her feeling compassionate towards those implicated.
Certainly, Shreve manages to draw the book to a more positive ending than might have been expected, by using one of her young characters to illustrate the fact that adverse circumstances may yet provoke positive reactions.
Technically, the book is an extraordinary feat, told from more than fifteen different viewpoints and several different time periods, yet as with her other novels, always a ‘good read’.
Some of the talk at the book launch I attended was about marketing. Shreve finds herself on the cusp between popular and literary fiction, which is not a problem, given the strong following she has built over the years. However, the possibility that she might be considered ‘a women’s writer’ clearly distresses her. She is skilled at writing male protagonists, imagining her way into their hopes and fears, and has done so again in Testimony. Many men already enjoy her work, and I recommend it to those who have yet to try it.
Clare F Hobba
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