A New Audiobook Experience

A Reader's Respite, as most of you know, has a love of audiobooks.  They don't outnumber the books we actually read with our own two Lasik-ed eyes, but we can't imagine a car ride without an audiobook playing.

Testimony, by Anita Shreve, was a bit of a new audio experience for us.  It was the first audiobook we've listened to featuring multiple narrators.  Our verdict?  In this case, we loved it. 

Testimony is the story, doled out in snippets of backflashes by various players in the plot, of scandal in an elite private school in Vermont.  When a video surfaces of a young freshman girl engaging in sexual acts with three (!) upperclassman boys, the scandal has enormous repercussions that go far, far beyond the media hype.

Shreve, in her trademark fashion, uses this novel to expose perspective.  One shocking event, multiple perspectives from different participants.  Nothing is as it seems, at least not to the the outsider.

In our sensationalized, media-ticker, Twitter, scandal-obsessed society, Shreve seeks to expose the complicated human beings behind the headlines.  Each chapter is narrated by a different player, so no wonder A Reader's Respite enjoyed the multiple narrators...we would ever have been able to keep track of them all with a single narrator.

The story is a compelling one and very much recommended on audio, especially if you can follow our lead and download it from your local library!