Testimony by Anita Shreve

Testimony will be released on October 21, 2008. Pre-order here.

Testimony by Anita Shreve was an easy, short read. Despite the fact that it was just over 300 pages, most chapters are only 2-3 pages thus leaving plenty of white space. If you have a short attention span, or only a minute here and there to read, this book will be an easy read for you.

Anita Shreve did an excellent job of transporting the reader inside a prestigious boarding school in Vermont where parents pay thousands upon thousands of dollars per year in order to keep their children safe from the general population of the public schools. However, things are not as clean cut and straight laced as one might think.

The book opens to a scene of the headmaster receiving a video involving three of his students having sex with an obviously drunk fourteen year old girl. That sets the stage for a series of regrets for parents, students, and administrators alike. In the end, only one character remains likeable, the little mentioned police officer. The headmaster makes a series of blunders that hurt the students and the school. The girl doesn’t quite tell the truth in order to avoid punishment by her parents that just end up shipping her off to a school in Texas. The boys regret their behavior, and a tragic discovery is made. The book is a series of journal entries, mental thoughts, and interview responses given by the various parties and woven into the landscape of a novel.

I left this book with an empty sick feeling while at the same time rejoicing in the fact that I decided not to send my son to an elite private boarding school in the Northeast.