| Notes on a Scandal | 
 enlarge | Author: Zoe Heller
Publisher: Penguin
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  85 reviews
Sales Rank: 6306
Media: Paperback
Edition: New edition
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 0.7
ISBN: 0141012250
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780141012254
ASIN: 0141012250
Publication Date: March 4, 2004
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Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.co.uk Review
Zoe Heller juggles journalism and novel-writing successfully in Notes on a Scandal and manages to say something interesting and complex about moral panics and the people who get caught up in them. Pottery teacher Sheba lets herself be talked into an affair with 15-year-old pupil Connolly; part of what is admirable about this novel is that there is no real attempt to extenuate this--it's wrong and she knows this from the start, enough to lie to herself and others about it. It's an abuse of her very limited power--he is one of the few of her pupils interested in art, not interested in perpetually disrupting her lessons. Sheba is not alone in abusing power, though, and Heller forces us to confront this unpleasant truth about the moralising, managerial headmaster, the husband freed by Sheba's action to seduce his own very slightly older students, and the relatives who never liked her much and can now disown her. Above all, she devotes most of the novel to Barbara, the older colleague who becomes Sheba's confidante and slowly manipulates the situation to make Sheba entirely dependent on her. This is a brilliantly gloomy study in obsession--and the obsession in question is not actually Sheba's with her underage lover. --Roz Kaveney
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| Customer Reviews: Read 80 more reviews...
Mixed motives, confused responses November 22, 2008
In Notes On A Scandal, Zoe Heller presents a novel narrated by Barbara Covett, a history teacher in St. George's, a comprehensive school in north London. When Bethsheba Hart joins the staff as a pottery teacher, Barbara realises that a special person may just have entered her life.
Sheba seems to be much that Barbara is not. She is younger, attractive, apparently free-thinking, married, has children and is irretrievably middle class. What she is not, unfortunately, is an experienced teacher, having trained only after bringing two children into adolescence. She is thus going to find life at St. George's rather tough.
For reasons best known to herself, the sixty-ish, self-assessed "frumpy" Barbara decides to keep a journal. Sheba figures in its pages and eventually comes to dominate them. It is an out of character pastime, perhaps, since Barbara seems to have little but contempt for her colleagues, and survives her educator's role by constantly keeping her students at arm's length. Perhaps this is what Barbara has done with every aspect of her life, despised it and shunned it in one. Strange, then, that Sheba, her character, her actions, even her words come to dominate Barbara's thoughts.
Like many who meet this new teacher, Barbara becomes apparently infatuated with this elegant, apparently free spirit. And also, we learn, does one of her pupils, a fifteen year old boy called Stephen.
Sheba, of course, is not the confident, satisfied, fulfilled dominatrix that others invent. She is a vulnerable, not quite organised mother of two. The elder daughter is a difficult teenager, the younger son disabled. Her husband is considerably older than her. Like Barbara, she also suppresses emotion, suppresses it, that is, until it takes over her life with abandon as her relationship with the boy simultaneously fulfils both reality and fantasy. It lasts for several months before it inevitably comes to light.
Barbara's role, throughout, is central. She is in the know. She is watching. She is not in control, of course, but exercises considerably more power than an onlooker. And when, eventually, the muck hits the fan, Barbara, who has done her share of the slinging, gets hit by some of the fall-out. The denouement is both surprising and logical. Though it is Sheba's motives that the police, the national press and her colleagues want to dissect, it is Barbara's that must interest the reader. She as been an informed, motivated diarist, it seems.
 Gripping story, great characterisation - all round excellent novel June 2, 2008
Fast paced from start to finish. Development of great characters and a fascinating story. Great satire.
Having a parent who is a (retired) teacher made this book even more real - the staffroom observations and the headteacher/teacher relationship was all too accurate!
unfortunate observations of an affair April 12, 2008
Very readable account of a female teacher's affair with a young male pupil,
as narrated by a lonely obsessive old harridan. Excellent characterisation.
Brilliant writing in which every word counts April 11, 2008
Sheba Hart is weak - she's let everyone manipulate her; her older husband, her horrid teenage daughter, her ghastly mother. So when one of her pupils pays her too much attention, she basks in it and then takes it too far. But more chilling is her 'friendship' with Barbara - an older woman teacher, who is desperate for attention herself. Barbara moves from friend to confidante and trusted ally, then betrayer and finally mother-figure and jailor. A truly awful character.
A great read. Brilliant writing in which every word counts in its 244 pages (hardback). Refreshing in an era of doorstops!
Gripping March 15, 2008
I thoroughly enjoyed this read though I found it not without fault. Had it gone into a little more detail on a few points like the reaction of the family, brother, husband etc of Sheba, and perhaps more input from the Connolly side of the story once it all became public I would have given this book a five. The Character of Barbara could also have been a little better developed, maybe giving insight into her past, but maybe that was part of the idea.
Overall I got great pleasure from this novel. While on the surface depicting friendship and relationships, it also shows an underlying sinister side. Good read!
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