Testimony review
Aug. 4th, 2009 08:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearTestimony by Anita Shreve is one of several books I've read in recent months that try to increase suspense and intrigue by fragmenting the plotline and revealing it bit by bit over the course of the book. Sometimes, this can work very well, but it often has a tendency to annoy me, rather than making me want to read further.
Testimony fragments its plot so much as to have 20 different narrators, each only given about five pages at a time to tell their story. The fact that a lot of them don't recur often, if at all, makes it very difficult to keep track of who's who, and causes the story to be revealed in such small pieces as to be infuriating rather than interesting.
The fact that the plot is about a school sex scandal and how it ruins the lives of pretty much an entire town of people doesn't help, as it's not exactly the jolliest book I've ever read. Still, it must have had some kind of appeal, since I did finish it. It's not that it's badly written, it just tries way too hard to be engaging - each narrator has an overly distinctive voice, and the style shifts constantly between first, second and third person, present and past tense, as it move from one chapter to another. Yes, the author can write in lots of different styles and voices, which is very impressive, but I really think they shouldn't have all been shoved into the same book.
It was good to have a break in the present day, but I'll be going back to the world of historical crime, now, please!
Testimony fragments its plot so much as to have 20 different narrators, each only given about five pages at a time to tell their story. The fact that a lot of them don't recur often, if at all, makes it very difficult to keep track of who's who, and causes the story to be revealed in such small pieces as to be infuriating rather than interesting.
The fact that the plot is about a school sex scandal and how it ruins the lives of pretty much an entire town of people doesn't help, as it's not exactly the jolliest book I've ever read. Still, it must have had some kind of appeal, since I did finish it. It's not that it's badly written, it just tries way too hard to be engaging - each narrator has an overly distinctive voice, and the style shifts constantly between first, second and third person, present and past tense, as it move from one chapter to another. Yes, the author can write in lots of different styles and voices, which is very impressive, but I really think they shouldn't have all been shoved into the same book.
It was good to have a break in the present day, but I'll be going back to the world of historical crime, now, please!
