Prep school's harsh lessons

ANITA SHREVE opens her new novel, "Testimony," with Mike Bordman, the headmaster of Avery Academy, a New England prep school, holding a videotape. "It was a small cassette," she writes, "not much bigger than the palm of his hand, and when Mike thought about the terrible license and risk exhibited on the tape, as well as its resultant destructive power, it was as though the two-by-three plastic package had been radioactive."

The video depicts a dorm-room bacchanal, a freshman girl sexually servicing three boys, the floor littered with empty beer cans and liquor bottles.

All three of the boys are star basketball players: Rob Leicht, a decent, if somewhat confused kid; "J Dot," a 19-year-old postgraduate student, whose age turns the scandal into a case of statutory rape; and Silas Quinney, the true innocent and fallen angel of the story.

The "victim" is Sienna, a girl unlike other 14-year-olds. As one of Shreve's characters disdainfully reports: "The word vixen came to mind."

Shreve frames her novel as a postmortem study on the incident, in which each of the characters "testifies" to a researcher. It's a device that doesn't always work, although it gives the story a "Rashomon"-type feel. As the chapters jump between voices and back and forth in time, the full scope of events comes out through the varying points of view.

Contrasting adults and teens, teachers and parents, faculty and the blue-collar locals who work at Avery, Shreve nicely captures the insular, often claustrophobic dynamic of boarding school life. The reputation of Avery is shattered when the media pick up on the scandal and it becomes tabloid fodder.

"By late morning," Shreve writes, "the big guns were there -- CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, The New York Times, The Washington Post, People Magazine -- you name it. Everyone wanted a piece of this."

At the center of the action is Silas, into whose front yard Mike crashes his car one icy winter night. Silas gains admission to Avery. Mike, unhappily married, falls for Anna Quinney, Silas' mom. Their affair ends up being the true catalyst for tragedy.

Shreve draws detailed portraits of her male characters, but oddly, gives short shrift to the women in the book. We have suffering mothers, guilt-ridden and fiercely devoted to their sons, and innocents like Noelle, Silas' girlfriend, who is portrayed as beyond reproach.