This is a psychological mystery story exploring several themes relevant to our time. Since it is told from several viewpoints in first person, with a couple of others in third person, one has the opportunity to delve into the minds of the characters and see the story from many angles. The most important aspect of the book is that the reader ends up caring for all the characters, no matter what their transgressions are. This alone makes the author Anita Shreve a master in presenting and exploring characters as they go through changes.

The story begins peacefully in Vermont, mostly in a private prep school, The Avery Academy, where everything seems to be working well enough. The trouble starts when, behind closed doors, the headmaster Mike Bordman is given a videotape of an incident that took place between the students, some with bright futures, high morals, and good social standing. The video shows a dorm room with scattered liquor bottles and beer cans where a freshman female and three boys are committing sex acts all under their own volition. The novel takes off from this point by analyzing and building on this specific incident, which ruins or radically changes most of the characters’ lives, including that of the headmaster and his family. In addition, the reputation of the school is destroyed since the scandal-hungry media turns it into a tabloid story.

The character who appeals to and saddens the reader the most is Silas Quinley. The headmaster, in the backstory, finds Silas when he crashes his car into the yard of Quinley’s farmhouse. Mike likes what he sees in Silas and helps him to gain admission to Avery. In Avery, Silas proves himself quickly as an excellent student and a human being. In the meantime, probably because of his dull marriage, Mike Bordman falls for Anna Quinley, Silas’s mother. The affair sets the stage for Silas’s downfall and becomes the most outstanding reason for his tragedy.

The story is presented as a mystery and its clues and hidden motives are opened one by one, keeping the reader on his toes. Most importantly, the book explores several societal concerns, mainly underage drinking and its dire consequences, teenage psychology, how personal mistakes devastate lives of both the guilty and the people around them, and how the media exploits scandals and misfortunes. The prose of the book is smooth, precise, and without ornamentation

reading as serious literature and re-evaluating the sad consequences of teenage drinking, which is usually taken quite lightly by most.

the characters, all of them, and the skill of the author in portraying them.

Anita Shreve is a graduate of B.A Tufts University. After winning the O. Henry Prize in 1975, she worked as a journalist in Africa. She turned to writing novels when she returned to the Unites States. Her nonfiction books are: Remaking Motherhood and Women Together, Women Alone. Her novels are: Body Surfing, Ethan Frome, The Last Time They Met, Light On Snow, Andrew Stevovich: Solitary Demons, A Wedding in December, The Pilot's Wife, Resistance, All He Ever Wanted, Where or When, Eden Close, Strange Fits of Passion, Sea Glass, Olympia, Fortune's Rocks, The Weight of Water, and Testimony. Another novel, A Change in Altitude, will be available in October 2009.

the characters are sound, the plot moves along at a steady pace, and the mysteries open one by one pushing the reader to the edge of his seat. Although some parts of the story are not presented in chronological order, I did not feel any choppiness in time or plot sequences.

Reading anything about a private prep school full of privileged children was not my first choice, since in my life I came to know of them quite well, but the expertise of Anita Shreve in presenting the truth in this story with such dynamic and different characters made me very glad that I read this book.

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Created Aug 09, 2009 at 5:27pm • Submit your own review...