Anita Shreve is one of my favorite contemporary authors. Her novel, Fortune's Rocks, easily lands on my top 10 list. With most great living writers (ie Pat Conroy or John Irving) you will be lucky to get a new book out of them once every five years. Not so with Shreve. She seems to publish a new book every eighteen months. I know that kind of productivity indicates that there may be some Danielle Steele quality to her work. I assure you there is not.
Testimony is (I'm guessing) loosely based upon the Duke rape case that monopolized the news a few years ago. Shreve's story is about a private boarding school and the aftermath of a rape by three drunk teenage boys on a fourteen year old girl. It is told from several different perspectives including the parents of two of the boys and the headmaster of the school.
I think Shreve's genius here is that she takes a really sad story and presents it without melodrama. That is rare as hell these days my friends. Read it.
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