Testimony by Anita Shreve

After my bout with A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book (read my full review here), it was actually quite refreshing to be, once again, reading a novel with a more decipherable plot.

Testimony by Anita Shreve

Anita Shreve's Testimony is all about a shocking sex scandal that happens in a pretigious private school, Avery Academy, located in a tiny Vermont town.  Told in the voices of various students (those directly and indirectly involved in the scandal), their family members, teachers, and the townsfolk; it is a story that aims to explain their reasons and reactions to this horrible event; a story that started years before the actual scandal leading to the after effects, more specifically how each of the main players fared later in their lives. (Read the full summary here at Amazon.com)

It may be confusing at times, with chapters jumping from one character's point-of-view to another and with shifting time periods, but all in the all, the author's showing of how fragile reputations are, how easily it can be destroyed by a careless, thoughtless action is very intersting to probe.  A good study on human psychological behaviors and our response to stresses in everyday life.

It's light reading and something I definitely recommend, especially to teenagers.

A single action can cause a life to veer off in a direction it was never meant to go.

(Testimony, 2009)