Anger, desire and intoxication can lead to regrettable events that destroy careers, marriages and even lives. Anita Shreve tells how in Testimony (2008, Back Bay Books, New York, 324 pages), an emotional, at times painful-to-read, riveting novel about a sex scandal at an exclusive boarding school in Vermont.
“A single action can cause a life to veer off in a direction it was never meant to go. Falling in love can do that, you think. And so can a wild party. You marvel at the way each has the power to forever alter an individual’s compass.”
In this book more than most, the first sentence foreshadows everything: “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 through the two-by-three plastic package had been radioactive.”
Avery Academy headmaster Mike receives a videotape showing three male students in sexual activity with a 14-year-old girl. How could the participants do what they did?
“I don’t know where the shame went. I guess the alcohol takes it away. I guess that’s the point of drinking, to take all the feelings and thoughts and morals away until you are just a body doing what a body will do.”
What should Mike do? How can he minimize the scandal? Is he even qualified to judge others? Shreve tells an intense story of wide, deep damages from an unsavory incident unwisely videotaped.
Years later, why should everyone affected by the scandal still obsess about it? Cleverly, the author creates a researcher keen to use the Avery mess as a case study who writes letters seeking answers. Some folks agree to talk. They all remember.
Some characters learn that the world often bewilders, even mesmerizes. “…we could see the mountains all around, and I remember being amazed that there was a mountain right behind the one we were on, one you couldn’t see from the ground, and it seems like there was a taller mountain behind that one, too, so that every time you got to the top, you would see that you had another mountain to climb, but then I figured there must be a top somewhere that was the highest of all, and I wondered if I would ever get to do that one day, go to the top.”
Every reader grasps the message that things aren’t always how they look. Consider Mike’s first impressions of the school: “The lobby resembled a living room, with a herringbone-patterned floor, fresh white paint and a number of portraits on the walls. There were several Persian carpets and, to one side, an attractive area where a visitor might make himself a cup of coffee and select an apple or a cookie for refreshment.”
With greater familiarity, a different reality emerges. “… he would discover over time that the carpets were not true Persians but rather cheap reproductions; that they were, in addition, stained with blots of spilled coffee and something that could only have been axle grease; that the cookies… often lingered untouched on their plates for days, causing Mike to wonder if they oughtn’t be dusted; and that the portraits on the walls, which had at first seemed so venerable, were in fact of benefactors and not of headmasters.”
No one reading Testimony will doubt Shreve’s word skills. Invariably, she chooses the right ones to enliven passages. For example, when Mike visits a farmhouse, his arrival “detonated” two sheepdogs.
The author notices and conveys vivid details. “He had the body of a farmer. His legs and arms were strong, but there was a hint of softness around the belly.”
One problem is that Shreve calls on so many characters to “testify” that readers must concentrate hard to keep track. The chorus of voices may cause confusion.
From Massachusetts, Shreve has written a stack of successful novels. They include Body Surfing, Strange Fits of Passion, The Pilot’s Wife and The Weight of Water.
Competently written, Testimony leaves its readers in a thoughtful mood. Evidently, circumstances can conspire to topple even competent, well-intentioned people. No one is immune or entirely safe.
Approval rating: 67 per cent.
For more information: www.AnitaShreve.com
(February 18, 2010)
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Anita Shreve probes a sex
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