What Was She Thinking? [Notes on a Scandal]

A book that broaches something considered sacrosanct is always going to be a challenging feat to pull off. However, Ms. Heller not only manages to do it cleanly but also repeats this success time and again. If this book were to be defined by just one adjective, and that's the only association allowed, I would unhesitatingly choose "Sumptuous". People reading this might think, "Oh! Venky has gone nuts", but let me explain. By "sumptuous", I mainly aim to describe the sheer pleasure of savoring the brilliant prose in which the novel is penned. It is simply delicious. The entire gamut of emotions is on display. As the characters are introduced, the author unveils a wide range of emotions, which are later shredded into a million pieces by the author's sharp pen and served as a gourmet treat to the reader. Above all, there is a remarkable subtlety in the prose style. It is languid, yet sharp. We are exposed to the warmth, the nastiness, the meanness and cruelty, the love, the carnality, the hypocrisy, and countless other aspects. The fallibility of human beings and their power plays are vividly portrayed. She swoops and skips into this mad dash world inside the characters' minds with a subtle stroke. Each emotion is created effortlessly with just a slight touch of the pen. Sometimes the pen is so sharp that it is like a Japanese knife, drawing blood. And the reader, engaged by the artist, moves along the flow. Then there is Sheba and Barbara. The charming young woman and the adroit elder. The instinctive and the analytical. The prey and the predator. (Here I must digress. I had the image of Judi Dench whenever Barbara was mentioned). After finishing this fascinating novel, I could picture Zoe Heller looking at the reader with a brilliant predatory smile lurking on her lips.

It is truly a remarkable work that keeps the reader enthralled from start to finish.

This is an article that is truly worthy of re-reading.

It holds a certain charm and value that makes it appealing for those days when one might find themselves sitting in a rocking chair.

Perhaps it is filled with profound thoughts, interesting stories, or beautiful descriptions that can transport the reader to another world.

As the years pass and one reaches those more relaxed and contemplative moments in a rocking chair, this article can serve as a source of entertainment, inspiration, or simply a means to unwind and lose oneself in its words.

It is like a precious gem that can be polished and enjoyed time and time again, bringing a sense of comfort and satisfaction with each reading.

Whether it is on a sunny afternoon or a quiet evening, this article is there, waiting to be rediscovered and savored.

4.5 ⭐️

This is a truly messed up story that delves into the complex relationship between a pedophile and her best friend, who essentially has feelings for her. It offers a really interesting character study. I wasn't anticipating to like this as much as I actually did. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised.

That being said, this book does have its moments that make me want to gouge my eyeballs out. However, compared to some other works I've read, the depictions of pedophilia here are not the worst.

I'm not entirely sure if I would recommend this book to others. On one hand, it presents a unique and thought-provoking exploration of a taboo subject. On the other hand, it may be too disturbing for some readers. Nevertheless, I do think it's worth a read for those who are brave enough to confront such uncomfortable themes.

From the back cover: School teacher Barbara Covett has led a solitary life. Then along comes Sheba Hart, the new art teacher at St George’s, who befriends her. As their relationship blossoms, another one also takes shape. Sheba has embarked on an affair with an underage male student. When this scandal explodes into a media frenzy, Barbara decides to pen an account in her friend’s defense. However, in doing so, she ends up uncovering not only Sheba’s secrets but also her own.

My reactions
Wow. The story, told from Barbara’s point of view, unfolds gradually as she observes and documents her impressions of the new art teacher. It’s evident that Sheba is consumed by the affair, emotionally frazzled, and not thinking rationally. But the reader slowly realizes that Barbara is also emotionally scarred. She is equally fixated on her friendship with Sheba and jealous of Sheba’s relationships with other teachers, and even with her husband and children.

In the end, the more fascinating psychological study is the portrayal of Barbara. What she discloses about herself while chronicling Sheba’s story is more nuanced and captivating than the story she intends to tell. She is a dangerous woman to have as a “friend.”

I did think that Heller was a bit too obvious with the symbolism in the names of these central characters. “Bathsheba” is bad enough, with all its connotations of sexual misbehavior, but “Covett”? Really? Still, this is a minor annoyance.

Overall, the book offers a complex and engaging exploration of human nature and the consequences of our actions.

This is one of those disquieting novels that initially presents an apparent theme but then cleverly reveals itself to be about something entirely different.

As its title and first pages imply, the surface plot involves a scandal that would please tabloids. Sheba Hart, a 41-year-old pottery teacher, arrives at a dreary north London comprehensive school, bringing with her a kind of tarnished glamour that causes a mild stir among the school's sex-starved males. The first suitor to make his move is 15-year-old Steven Connolly, a rather dull-witted lad with some artistic tendencies, a cabbie father, and a home on an estate.

Within months of her arrival, Sheba, a mother of two and the seemingly contented wife of a lecturer 20 years her senior, is having sex with the grammatically challenged adolescent on the art-room floor. So far, it seems somewhat dubiously titillating. However, that's not the case. Neither of the participants tells the story in their own words, so instead of the expected indulgence in dodgy Nabokovian pleasures, we are given a third party's rather matter-of-fact account of the charmless youth's entanglement with the unlikely school sexpot.

Notes on a Scandal is therefore neither an essay in praise of older women nor a Death in Venice-like reverie on the exquisite qualities of the young male. We are kept at an emotional distance throughout by the novel's narrator, and are immediately told how the affair ends, effectively deflating all potential for thrilling tension.

The novel is narrated by Barbara Covett, the self-appointed chronicler of Sheba's affair. Her alarming enthusiasm for this task includes using gold stars to highlight key events and creating a timeline on graph paper. Approaching retirement age, Barbara, a colleague and friend of Sheba's, is a childless spinster who has taught history for several decades and lives in Archway with her cat.

Barbara does not belong to the Nick Carraway school of narrators, and at first her attempt to codify the passions of others is clumsily intrusive. But her voice as a "caretaker...defending the character of an alleged child-molester" insidiously takes over. The disturbing undercurrent that is Barbara's psyche wells up and drives the book more powerfully than the perfunctory little tale of underage sex that frames it.

"This is not a story about me," she says. But of course it is. As Sheba embarks on a life of Hampstead Heath sex sessions, scuffles by the kiln, and full-blown symptoms of infatuation (while simultaneously dealing with the other rebellious teen in her life, her 17-year-old daughter), guard dog Barbara is both drooling and snapping in the background as her fixation with Sheba takes on stalkerish overtones.

Painfully class-conscious, embittered, and obsessive, Barbara has a history of social rejection that only fuels her determination to soak up every detail of Sheba's full life. It is difficult to determine whether her impulses stem from suppressed Sapphism, maternal frustration, or outright lunacy. Eventually, all that simmering love-hatred leads to a staggering betrayal and tabloid outrage.

This is a fascinating, brilliant, and irritating novel that constantly defies definition by genre, literary value, or even purpose. It's a quiet little read - yet horribly addictive. Beneath the breathtakingly acute observations and much fine writing, there is a lightness of sentiment that sporadically propels the novel into the realm of commercial drivel. The main question that comes to mind is - why? Heller is a talented writer, crafting her material with supreme confidence. The novel is funny, bleak, superbly structured, and full of the satisfyingly tight phrases that distinguish her journalism. But the fundamental point remains somewhat elusive.

As her first novel, Everything You Know, demonstrated, pathologically flawed protagonists are her specialty, and the distortions of the unreliable narrator are intriguing. But Heller, for all her cold-eyed brilliance and psychological insights, still has to find her subject - still has to dig her pen deeper into everyday emotion. Her description of "the drip drip of long-haul, no-end-in-sight solitude" is hauntingly moving. About to visit the strangely dated Sheba, poor Barbara can "live on a crumb of anticipation for weeks at a time, but always in danger of crushing the waited-for event with the weight of my excessive hope."

Sheba steadily and hilariously regresses, resorting to disguised teenage voices and late-night crouching beneath Connolly's bedroom, complete with its Grand Prix bedspread. By the end, in one glorious inversion, Barbara has become the mother to the middle-aged "celebrity deviant," who now naps on a princess bed and eats nursery food. Truly tragicomic, this flimsy tale, this little psychological masterpiece, continues to disturb long after its last page.

Clever, clever, clever!

What was she thinking? At first, I simply assumed we were talking about Sheba. After all, she slept with a 15-year-old! But by the end of this book, it was someone else's thoughts that I was questioning.

This is an extremely good book, and it was adapted into a wonderful movie. I must admit that the movie has a greater impact. Judy Dench brings the character of Barbara to its fullest expression. Cate Blanchett is phenomenal as the sympathetic adulteress and mistress of her 15-year-old student. That's a difficult role to play! The book is subtle, and the character of Barbara exists in a gray area between good and evil. In the movie, Barbara is completely black. Sheba is much more sympathetic in the movie and not at all in the book. In the book, she is not very clever and rather immature. On the other hand, it is Barbara who garners more of our sympathies on the page.

I truly enjoyed this clever book, but I have to say that whoever adapted it into a film did an excellent job. The story was enhanced by two extremely talented actresses and a perfect adaptation to the screen. The film version is more uncomfortable, desperate, and believable. The book is also very, very good, but it has a much slower build-up, while the movie doesn't offer any comfort. So, after seeing and reading both, I give four strong stars to the book and five to the movie. Well done on both fronts.

Zoe Heller presents us with this captivating story that is recounted by a spinster history teacher. The narrator, Barbara Covett, is an unreliable and caustic character.

She relays the tale of a passionate romance that unfolds between an arts teacher, Bathsheba Hart, and a rebellious and unkempt 15-year-old student, Steven Connolly.

This novel delves into the themes of impossible forgiveness and an uncertain fate, which creates a sense of psychological suspense that can make the reader feel rather awkward.

Moreover, this book was shortlisted for the prestigious 2003 Man Booker Prize for fiction, further highlighting its literary merit and significance.

The complex relationships and the moral dilemmas presented in the story make it a thought-provoking and engaging read that keeps the reader on the edge of their seat until the very end.

First off, can we have a discussion about that exquisitely chosen surname? Barbara Covett - it's truly Dickensian!

Excuse him, what he actually means is Dickensian.

It never fails to make me shake my head whenever people give a book a poor review simply because they didn't like the main character.

Were we supposed to like the main character? In this particular case, the answer is a resounding NO.

Well, then the author has accomplished her task.

So be aware, you won't like this main character. However, there are those of us who have a penchant for unlikeable characters and who relished every single sad, bitter, and twisted word.

Too often, many of my reviews somehow end up with me effusively praising the amazing Judi Dench (who starred in the film adaptation). But this time, I will resist that temptation.

You're welcome.