A review by birdwatching
Testimony by Anita Shreve

3.0

“A single action can cause a life to veer off in a direction it was never meant to go." This quote, along with frequent mention of the dangers of black ice in the story's Vermont setting, sum up the message of the book - the way that a single, unforseen incident can cause lives, and whole communities to spin out of control (it is also a frequent theme of Anita Shreve's books and one I enjoy reading). I thought this theme was well developed through the book, from the multiple testimonies of all the players centrally and peripherally linked in to the incident (a sex scandal at a private boarding school). As much as I enjoyed this book, it was undermined for me by the fact that the girl at the centre of the scandal, unlike the boys, was very undeveloped and came across as a pure plot device. Given the subject matter, this was problematic.