Notes on a Scandal: What Was She Thinking?: A Novel
by Zoe Heller
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avg 3.54
An unforgiving, cold-eyed, wickedly beautiful little book.
A warning: if you have ever been crushingly lonely -- particularly if you have, on occasion, feebly attempted to rationalize that loneliness as a burden of your superior and isolating intelligence -- then I suspect that you, like me, will feel personally filleted by certain passages in this book.
Here's an example of Heller's brutally precise understanding of this manner of loneliness; what strikes me in this passage is how elega...more
A warning: if you have ever been crushingly lonely -- particularly if you have, on occasion, feebly attempted to rationalize that loneliness as a burden of your superior and isolating intelligence -- then I suspect that you, like me, will feel personally filleted by certain passages in this book.
Here's an example of Heller's brutally precise understanding of this manner of loneliness; what strikes me in this passage is how elega...more
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In the end, What Was She Thinking? isn't so much about the standard student-teacher affair as it is about the complicated weights and balances of female friendships. Some of the novel's funniest scenes show the women adopting a posture of honesty and ''supportiveness'' while privately judging or dismissing one another. It's a recognizable snit-fit of ''enough about you, what about me'' that pushes Barbara into her final betrayal. In a way, Barbara risks more for friendship than Sheba does...more
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Grim, grim, grim. Here's an unstinting, gaze-unaverted look at the nastiness, perversion and self-deluding aspects of human nature. One woman would do anything to keep a friendship, another would do anything to seduce a young pupil. Zoe Heller renders all of this in tense, compelling, page-turning drama, yet leavened by shards of brilliant dark comedy that is "humor in the jugular vein", to borrow a phrase from Mad Magazine. Barbara Covett, in observing the under-arms stubble of a te...more
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Read in July, 2007
Not a poorly written book, but I had a difficult time empathizing with the characters. When I read a book, typically I like to come away with something: more knowledge, deeper understanding, empathy, or just a riotous good time. None of that happened with this book. I just felt empty and sad, and very baffled by these characters. I could empathize in some aspects with Barbara, but try as I might to gain some sort of insight into Sheba's psyche and relate to even a shred of what motivated her, I ...more
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It's been a while since I've read this one...if you're going to see the film, read the book first. I loved the book, especially the way it takes a tongue-in-cheek look at both the media and public education. Granted, it's across the pond (GB) media and public ed, but they're not so very different from the U.S. at all...so anyway, the way both are scrutinized through the eyes of the shrewd protagonist are both dead-on and amusing. Heller also does a spot-on job of creating a classic example of th...more
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Read in July, 2008
I absolutely loved this book. The English lingo gets me every time, but it was especially awesome in this story of a lonely teacher who befriends a new colleague who begins an affair with a student. The character of Barbara was both revolting and fascinating. She's so cynical, but weird and obsessive. Can't wait to see what they did with the movie version!
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I liked this. I kept thinking about The Accidental while reading it because this book is better, being considerably more imagined. It had to be difficult writing this novel first person, but it was a good decision. Barbara is intelligent but lonely. She is a teacher and literate (the one doesn’t assume the other). Living alone she has the time to write up her lengthy notes on Sheba’s relationship with Connolly. So the assumption is she bases the memoir on these notes. Some of the events she ...more
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Read in January, 2007
This book has serious balls. Many of us saw the movie, which is good, but doesn't begin to capture the depth of observation, the twisted friendship between the two female main characters, or the surprising issues behind a high school student-teacher affair. The observations about loneliness are brutally dead-on, as are those about the unwitting arrogance of the upper class and the capacity for teen-agers to manipulate adults by playing into their assumptions. The voice of the narrator Barbara is...more
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Read in October, 2008
Since Notes On a Scandal is one of my all time favorite movies - so much so that it inspired me to write a song by the same title - I thought I should check out the book to see how true it was to the screen. The film definitely does a great job of mirroring the book, apart from a few details. The book is actually a bit more disturbing and unsettling, being told completely from Barbara's distorted point of view. But the choice of words is brilliant and it's easy to see what a beautiful screenplay...more
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Read in February, 2007
When this came out a few years ago, the title made me assume that it was just another chic-lit thing. When the movie based on it came out, they used the book’s subtitle, Notes on a Scandal, as the movie title. It’s a much better title and a shame they didn’t use it as the title for the book, which deserves the better title. Heller’s novel is excellent, with a creepiness that reminds me of early Ian McEwan. The narrator, Barbara, is a stereotypical spinster school teacher, complete with a...more
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I thought this book was amazing and that the movie, while different, really got to the heart of what the book was about-- not an easy task for such a rich and complex read. The thing that I thought was really amazing about this theme, in both the book and movie, was the way that it questioned our preconceived notions of perversion and how those notions are affected by age and gender. If you want to talk legally Sheba was the only criminal, her affections were the ones that were inappropriate, ...more
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Read in April, 2008
'What Was She Thinking?' chronicles the salacious affair between a middle-aged pottery teacher (Sheba) and one of her students. The story is told from the perspective of the ever-creepy Barbara, a frumpy sixtish history teacher, who ends up developing a bizarre 'friendship' with Sheba during the course of her affair.
The narration is excellent...dark, blackly comical, and somewhat nihilistic. And, in the end, Heller manages to achieve something that is impossible: providing a book with n...more
The narration is excellent...dark, blackly comical, and somewhat nihilistic. And, in the end, Heller manages to achieve something that is impossible: providing a book with n...more
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I haven't seen the movie that this novel is based on, I don't know if I ever will. I don't want to be disappointed by a shoddy adaptation, I like this book too much. I was fascinated from start to finish. I didn't want to put it down, it's a sick story.
The story centers around 40-something y.o teacher Bathsheba Hart and her affair with her 15 year old student and is presented to us by her 60-something y.o colleague/friend Barbara Covett. Barbara's account of this story is unreliable at b...more
The story centers around 40-something y.o teacher Bathsheba Hart and her affair with her 15 year old student and is presented to us by her 60-something y.o colleague/friend Barbara Covett. Barbara's account of this story is unreliable at b...more
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Read in June, 2007
I read the book then watched the movie. Okay, I did it the other way around, but this is practically a textbook example of how to succeed with a screen adaptation. Normally we're all whinging that the movie is not as good as the book, but here, playwright Patrick Marber’s screenplay is actually superior to the original. (Which is good too).
Author Zoe Heller is a well-known newspaper columnist in England, and for her novel examining an art teacher's illicit relationship with a fifteen year o...more
Author Zoe Heller is a well-known newspaper columnist in England, and for her novel examining an art teacher's illicit relationship with a fifteen year o...more
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Has a copy to sell/swap
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Read in January, 2007
recommends it for:
people who enjoy gossip especially teachers
This book is an excellent example of an author using an unreliable narrator to make a book much more interesting to read. It certainly helps that Barbara is a very funny and intelligent narrator at times though the further I got into the book the more I started to doubt her sanity. It is also very interesting to think about Barbara's motives for the things she does and says even more so after you finish reading the book.
The actual scandal made my stomach turn, but it has its titillating mom...more
The actual scandal made my stomach turn, but it has its titillating mom...more
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Read in June, 2007
Zoe Heller's observations, through Barbara, the desperate hanger-on to Sheba's glorious, illicit affair, are painfully honest and brilliantly manipulative. After deciding that she and Sheba are destined to be "soulmates," Barbara looks on with disdain when Sheba, instead, befriends the fat, pretentious Sue Hodge -- "the sort of woman who wears Lady-Lite panty liners every day of the month, as if there is nothing her body secretes that she doesn't think vile enough to be captured i...more
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Read in January, 2007
I would be interested to read this book with a bookclub, because once I was done with it I sort of had the puppy-dog-cocked-head thing going on. "Huh?"
I did like the way the narrator immersed the reader in the story. Her writing is so in-character that you really get sucked in to her perspective. The book just felt sordid with its inside perspective on the narrator's obsession with her younger colleague, and the strangely disgusting depictions of the student. But it felt exactly th...more
I did like the way the narrator immersed the reader in the story. Her writing is so in-character that you really get sucked in to her perspective. The book just felt sordid with its inside perspective on the narrator's obsession with her younger colleague, and the strangely disgusting depictions of the student. But it felt exactly th...more
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Read in June, 2008
This book SUCKS! With a big, capital "S". The narrator is whiny and self absorbed. Sometimes I can't even believe that I am reading the words on the page. They are that...horrible. The author is british but really "over-brits" the prose. Most times I can keep up with the British writers and at least gleen a meaning. But this is crappy!
You know that part in Billy Madison, at the end when they are doing that academic decathalon and Billy has to explain about the industrial ...more
You know that part in Billy Madison, at the end when they are doing that academic decathalon and Billy has to explain about the industrial ...more
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Has a copy to sell/swap
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Read in December, 2005
recommends it for:
everyone
Best book I've read in the last five years. The narration is amazing... the film comes out this week (already been nominated for the Golden Globes) and since the strength of the book is all in the narration, I wonder how the movie will turn out. (Although I completely trust Patrick Marber of Closer fame who adapted it - and also Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett who star in it.) This book is so good that I don't want people to be tainted with prior knowledge or assumptions from the film veri...more
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Read in October, 2007
I haven't done much writing of my own lately, and this book is the reason. Heller's prose is so compelling and brilliant that I felt in despair of my own. No one else has ever expressed my sentiments of fireworks so precisely.
This is a story of loneliness and obsession, in which the character of the narrator is revealed more clearly than the actions of the subject. It is dark, suspenseful, brutally honest. I chose this book because I planned on watching the movie at some point. Now I don...more
This is a story of loneliness and obsession, in which the character of the narrator is revealed more clearly than the actions of the subject. It is dark, suspenseful, brutally honest. I chose this book because I planned on watching the movie at some point. Now I don...more
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book data (includes all editions)
avg rating (all editions): 3.54 (1265 ratings) avg rating (this edition): 3.71 (85 ratings) number of reviews: 261
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"When you live alone, your furnishings, your possessions, are always confronting you with the thinness of your existence."
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