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In this video, I will share my thoughts and opinions on a particular topic.

I believe that this subject is of great importance and has a significant impact on our lives.

Throughout the video, I will explore different aspects of the topic, providing examples and explanations to support my views.

I hope that by watching this video, you will gain a better understanding of the issue and perhaps even form your own opinions.

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Man, Barbara is truly a psychotic biatch.

Sheba, on the other hand, is a lonely married mother. Her self-confidence is extremely low, and her morals are rather questionable.

Steven, in this story, emerges as the true winner.

Barbara is a crotchety and repressed woman who keeps a journal about the people around her. When she discovers evidence of Sheba's transgressions, she devises a way to use it against her and penetrate her defenses. She manages to hold Sheba captive in one form or another throughout the entire narrative.

Sheba is so pitifully sad that at times, one might feel the urge to slap some confidence and common sense into her.

The pacing of the story starts off VERY slow. It does improve as the plot progresses, but some of the journaling sections seem to drag on a bit too long.

Overall, this is definitely a worthwhile read. I have a great love for the movie as well, although I do wish they hadn't altered the ending of the book.

It earns a solid 3 stars, perhaps even a 3.5.

Creepy!

This simple word holds a world of unease and discomfort. It can describe a feeling that chills you to the bone, as if something is lurking in the shadows, waiting to pounce.

The very thought of something creepy can make your skin crawl and your heart race. It might be a strange sound in the night, an eerie silence, or a mysterious figure that you catch a glimpse of out of the corner of your eye.

Creepy things have a way of getting under your skin and staying there, making you feel on edge and nervous. Whether it's a haunted house, a horror movie, or a real-life encounter, the feeling of creepiness is one that is hard to forget.

It can leave you with a sense of dread and a lingering fear that follows you long after the experience is over. So, the next time you feel that creepy sensation, be prepared for an adventure into the unknown and a journey into the depths of your own fears.

I very much enjoyed the movie, so I was slightly nervous about reading the book.

How could it be better?

Well, it is! The narrative method is so much clearer, and it makes for a wonderful read.

Not only is there the fascination with Sheba and her affair, but also the layer created by Barbara's manipulation and brutal honesty about being so.

The book delves deeper into the characters' minds and motives, allowing the reader to truly understand their complex relationships.

It explores themes such as love, lust, jealousy, and betrayal in a more profound way than the movie ever could.

The writing is beautiful and engaging, drawing the reader in from the very first page.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed the movie or is interested in a thought-provoking read about human nature.

Twenty years have elapsed since I first delved into this remarkable piece of literature. With each subsequent reread, its sheer brilliance becomes even more strikingly evident.

What might have otherwise been a rather ordinary and clichéd tale of a teacher/pupil affair is transformed into something far more menacing and captivating with the presence of Barbara, the narrator.

Bitter, cruel, and manipulative, Barbara emerges as one of the most fascinating narrators I can vividly remember. She wields control over the narrative, both on the printed page and within the story itself. As she gradually reveals the scandal involving her 'friend', Sheba, she simultaneously exposes her own malevolent character.

Barbara yearns for a friend, a companion to share in life's miseries. The more she insidiously burrows under your skin, the more difficult it becomes to look away. I despise her, yet at the same time, I can't help but feel a twinge of pity for her. And I am certain that even twenty years from now, she will still find herself alone, trapped in her own web of darkness and despair.

A modern classic, a book so beautiful and perfect that it seems as if a sculptor is uncovering the figure that has always existed beneath the stone. It is a literary masterpiece that captivates the reader from the very first page.

And yet, if I were to rely solely on my own experience of it and my personal inclinations, I would have deducted a star. The reason? It's just too sad, my friend. TOO DAMN SAD. The beauty of the story is intertwined with a profound sense of sorrow that aches within the heart.

The author has masterfully crafted a narrative that elicits a wide range of emotions, but the overwhelming sadness can be almost too much to bear. Despite this, the book remains a must-read for those who appreciate the power of literature to touch the soul and make us feel. It is a testament to the author's skill and talent that they can create a work that is both beautiful and heart-wrenching at the same time.

Cold, dark and biting!

A ring side view to a vile media scandal where most of the action is off the court. Notes on a Scandal is a book that will leave you cold inside.

Let's get the taboo out of the way. Sheba, the new pottery teacher, mother of 2 teenagers and daughter of a famous economist, has an affair with her 16-year-old student. Once you take away the focus from this, you realize it is a multi-layered narrative more about the hypocrisy of society and the residual evil in people. And you soon realize that the only character you end up not hating completely is Sheba (apart from Ben).

Barbara, the old spinster teacher and confidante of Sheba, is the most terrifying of them all. Barbara is not a nice person at all, if you knew what she is thinking. We come to know of her thoughts, her views and how she preys on the scandal to feed her need for human company. Some part you feel pity for Barbara and are terrified by loneliness. The book is a lot about power - not all physical.

Richard, Sheba's husband, though a victim, is not all likeable. Stephen, 'the boy' whom Sheba has the affair with, is vile and you would gladly slap him. The same applies for Polly (her daughter) and Mrs. Taylor (her mom). The book cannot get off by saying it's all about love, but the fall is not pretty and you end up sympathizing with the fate of Sheba, who deserves better.

There are multiple quote-worthy lines on loneliness and media. I loved this cold deviant book much like a plunge into icy water - it's fun in the short term, but not to be oft repeated. It makes you think about the darker side of human nature and the consequences of our actions. The characters are well-developed and the story keeps you engaged from start to finish. Overall, it's a thought-provoking and disturbing read that will stay with you long after you've finished the book.

Absolutely brilliant!

I read it all in one big glut, completely engrossed.

The characters are so skilfully crafted that it could easily pass for an actual memoir.

The story is profound and intricate, with layers upon layers of depth.

Yet, it reads like an addictive thriller, keeping me on the edge of my seat from start to finish.

I couldn't put it down.

Every page turn revealed something new and exciting, making it a truly captivating read.

I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a literary masterpiece that combines the best of both worlds: the depth and authenticity of a memoir and the thrilling pace of a thriller.

Loved it!

This was truly an uncomfortable and arduous read.

While the disturbing and at times explicit sexual liaison between 15-year-old Steven and his middle-aged pottery teacher, Sheba, serves as the impetus for the plot, it is the warped succubus-like connection between the narrator and Sheba that assumes the central position.

One doesn't necessarily need likable characters for a book to be excellent, and "Notes on a Scandal" is a prime illustration of this. The narrator, Barbara - a reserved 60-something-year-old spinster who lives alone with her cat - is particularly malicious. Barbara preys upon Sheba the moment she enters the school as a new staff member - she is fixated on her appearance, her mannerisms, and the beauty and wealth of her family.

Barbara is willing to forgive and overlook Sheba's actions at all costs as it means she gets precisely what she desires - a helpless Sheba completely under her control. It is evident that there is a psycho-sexual attraction on Barbara's part that seeps from her very pores. Barbara commandeers Sheba's life, permits her to continue her warped affair with a teenage boy, all so she can have her to herself.

This is a worryingly realistic and grotesque novel about power dynamics. It delves into the minds of abusers and their accomplices - and it also alters the narrative. Sheba is not condemned in the newspapers for her affair with a student; instead, the student is lauded for his sexual prowess. At the very least, it provides food for thought.

Another novel within what I'm tentatively classifying as the "pedophilia genre" is Zoë Heller's Notes on a Scandal. This work reads much less perverse than previous entries in the genre. The reason for this is that Heller shifts the focus. Instead of centering on the relationship between the adult sexual deviant and their child lover, she focuses on the relationship between the adult deviant and her older, perhaps also deviant friend.

The tone in the novel is sanitized and careful. It is narrated by Barbara, a senior teacher at a London school. There, she befriends Sheba, a younger teacher who meets Connolly, a fifth-year schoolboy and becomes his lover. Barbara is erudite and constructs her reconstruction of the events almost as if she is writing a British comedy of manners. Explicitness is deliberately ignored, recounted briefly and factually to provide a narrative frame but nothing more. In fact, the most libidinous moments occur not between Sheba and her boy nymphet but between her and Barbara.

There is also something decidedly less sinister about a female criminal. We are more likely to laugh and jeer at a woman who breaks the laws of sexual consent than we are to curse and spit at her. Is it because women are more prone to seek love? Although the book is subtitled What Was She Thinking, it's difficult to say what Sheba was thinking, as her thoughts are filtered through Barbara's recollections and biases. But there is a strong assertion that Sheba was in actual, unadulterated, genuine love with Connolly, which shouldn't complicate matters but seemingly does. Sheba becomes a pitiful character, someone to sympathize with even as she awaits her trial for obvious wrongdoing.

And in that unwanted but undeniably sparked sympathy lies the question: do books that discuss the intimate lives of pedophiles glamorize them? For example, for all of its eponymous hubbub, Lolita is a book about Humbert Humbert. Notes on a Scandal accomplishes an even weirder trick: it's not about Connolly, the 16-year-old boy lover; it's not about Sheba, his 40-something-year-old pottery teacher and lover; it's about Barbara, Sheba's senior citizen friend, confidante, and keeper. In adding a third level of displacement from the real victim, Heller suggests that Sheba may be just another victim. The age difference between Sheba and Barbara is nearly equivalent to that of Sheba and Connolly. And despite the absence of sexual perversion in their relationship and the admission that they are both fully acting adults, it's just as controlling, one-sided, and desperate.

Who is the victim here? Connolly? Sheba? Barbara? Connolly is excused by pleading immaturity. Sheba knows her relationship with Connolly is forbidden but is helpless before her own vast emptiness. So Heller forces us to ponder: can the guilty also be victims? Is prey and predator but a human-imposed dichotomy? Criminalize Sheba, punish her, chain her we must; but blame her gently, softly, with a kindness that comes from being happy and knowing better. We are left then to assign most of our rage to Barbara, Sheba's jailer if Sheba were wise enough to see the lock and key. If we strain our eyes, we can see how Barbara might be just another victim in a long chain of victims, of prey and predator, of people who hurt others because they are hurt themselves. But there is no god hovering above Barbara manipulating her strings. We can imagine one, of course: a vicious mother, a bygone lover, a society that condemns spinsterhood but condemns lesbian relationships even more vehemently. Heller hasn't provided a perpetrator to Barbara's victimhood, however, so the blame rests there, with the oldest, the wisest, and the loneliest.

Books like Notes on a Scandal complicate issues that we don't want to see as complicated. They interrogate questions that we don't want asked and tell us that victims are not isolated, even in black and white crimes like an adult sleeping with a minor. Open your eyes to the chains of guilt but know that the blame will always and must always come to rest in one place and on one person.

Here's the truly astonishing thing that occurs in Zoe Heller's uproariously funny, soul-crushing, and brilliantly crafted Notes on a Scandal. And it's not the part where a teacher has an inappropriate relationship with her student. You might assume it would be, wouldn't you? The beautiful, ethereal pottery teacher Sheba engages in an affair with her teenage student, and that's the premise of the book. It's narrated by a lonely old spinster named Barbara, who has been overlooked and pushed to the sidelines her entire life. You initially think she's the fifth business - a peripheral observer, a bystander. But here's the astonishing part: gradually yet inevitably, Barbara takes center stage. And here's the really mind-boggling thing: you become completely engrossed in her story. Halfway through the book, you realize that you're far more interested in Barbara than in the scandalous student-teacher liaison.

Sheba is relatively uncomplicated. She married too young to someone much older. Now that she's starting to age herself, she yearns for her youth and the days when she was beautiful. She's not a profound thinker and often finds herself in trouble.

Barbara, on the other hand, is a great deal more complex. Is she gay? Probably, in the sense that people used to be so deeply closeted that they didn't even recognize their own homosexuality. Sheba's husband hits the nail on the head when he accuses Barbara of being an incubus, a sort of demon who secretly comes and drains the life energy of sleeping women. Barbara is buttoned-up, strict, hilariously caustic, and desperately lonely. Heller's descriptions of loneliness are truly devastating. \\"The level of the salt in your shaker decreases at the same excruciating rate, day after day,\\" she writes. She asks you to envision what it feels like \\"to sit in a darkened flat on Halloween night, because you can't bear to expose your desolate evening to a crowd of taunting trick-or-treaters.\\" Tough stuff, isn't it? And it turns out that the most captivating aspect of the book is Barbara's desperate longing for companionship and the lengths she's willing to go to obtain it. She'll sacrifice everything just to be a part of something, and indeed, she does, and she becomes the main focus. She's not the fifth business after all; she is the heart of the matter.

Notes on a Scandal is an outrageously sordid tale, told by a thoroughly unlikable and perhaps unreliable narrator. It delves into the seedy world of an illicit sexual affair between a discontented middle-aged schoolteacher and a disadvantaged teenage student with learning difficulties. Virtually all the characters are despicable, and there is not a glimmer of hope in this entire sorry saga. Yet, the fact that it makes for a captivating read is a testament to Zoe Heller's remarkable mastery of the written word.

Barbara Covett, a middle-aged spinster and history teacher at St. George's School in Archway, North London, finds herself in a rather unideal educational setting. The school serves as a catchment area for disadvantaged students who can't afford more prestigious institutions. Enter Bathsheba (or Sheba) Hart, the new pottery teacher, who is both naive and sexy. Barbara is initially drawn to her but keeps her distance until one day when she helps Sheba control a rowdy group of students, something Sheba struggles with. Their friendship blossoms when Sheba confides in Barbara about her affair with Steven Connolly. Barbara is appalled and advises Sheba against it, but Sheba is unable to break free, and the affair inevitably leads to the teacher facing charges of molesting an underage student.

The narrative begins with Sheba already arrested and out on bail. Kicked out of her home by her self-righteous husband Richard, she and Barbara are temporarily staying at the house of Sheba's brother Eddie. Barbara is documenting the affair, which we, the readers, are privy to.

Barbara quickly reveals herself to be a haughty and frustrated prig, with possible homosexual impulses that she has yet to admit. Ms. Heller has done an excellent job of塑造 her voice. She has a low opinion of almost all her colleagues, including the headmaster Pabblem. However, despite her blatant prejudices, there is a certain perceptive honesty in her. She is a person with no illusions about herself or the world, able to see beyond the beautiful facade and uncover the ugly truth beneath. Through her grey-tinted glasses, we witness people at their worst. Sheba is naive and只顾 immediate sensual gratification; Richard is ostensibly an intellectual but is actually an ineffective blowhard; Polly, Sheba's daughter, is a rebellious teenager and a manipulative child-devil. The only character treated sympathetically is Ben, Sheba's son with Down's Syndrome.

The memoir is a curious blend. Barbara讲述 her own activities in the first person, but there are also parts where she narrates Sheba's adventures from a third-person perspective. The question then arises as to how she could possibly know the exact details of what happened. The answer is that she doesn't; she is writing from her imagination. And since we are aware of Barbara's feelings for Sheba from the beginning of the memoir (such as her illogical jealousy over Sheba's friendship with Sue, the music teacher), it is inevitable that the affair will be described in the most lurid terms. The author, in effect, asks us to distrust her narrator.

Yet, we also see Barbara's stark honesty about her personal feelings and her strange vulnerability hidden behind the tough exterior of the iron lady. At some point in the story, we find ourselves at least partially identifying with this tragic product of the hypocritical British middle class. And suddenly, everything becomes a matter of shades of grey rather than black and white, just like real human life.

In this tale of sex and sleaze within the walls of a London school, Zoe Heller has managed to create a drama that forces us to question the very foundation of our moral standards.