REVIEW for Testimony

Thank you so much to Miriam at Hachette Books for a copy of this ARC!

TITLE: Testimony

AUTHOR: Anita Shreve

DATE: October 21, 2008

GENRE: Fiction

RATING: 3.5 Stars

For some reason, other than The Pilot's Wife, I had never really read anything else by Anita Shreve, so I was thrilled when I was given the opportunity of reading Testimony. First off, I love the cover - it sends the message that this is going to be a dark and broody story. Its perfect for the actual storyline. I am very big on covers and find that if I don't like the cover, I often don't care for the story (yeah, I know sounds a tad shallow) but I am honest!

Testimony is, on the surface, the story of a group of students who engage in illicit sexual activities and then have the brainstorm of taping them - this is a big mistake as the tape gets into the headmaster's hands and precipitates a series of events that somehow take a life of their own.

Testimony is a book that is hard to review because the surface story is just that - a surface story - and behind the sexual scandal story lies another reality. So, with this in mind, I am trying to write this review without giving anything away.

Of course, this is also one of the strong points of this novel - you get an enigma, within another enigma - its like a gift that you keep unwrapping to find another one and another one...

The prose is a tad too flowery for my taste however and this, to me, removes from the novel. I prefer my writing to be a little bit more to the point and a little less dramatic in style, but for longtime fans of Anita Shreve, I believe this will only add to the richness of this book.

I enjoyed the storyline a great deal and while I thought Shreve took a while to get there, she does tell a wonderful story.