Books of the Month

'Notes on a Scandal' by Zoe Heller

April 2004 

Everyone seems to be talking about this book in the UK at the moment, which to my peverse book-choosing mind is normally a guarantee that I won't pick it up until the fuss has died down (I only read White Teeth a couple of years ago; I still haven't got round to Brick Lane). But I've made an exception this time, and I'm glad I did.

Heller's second novel is a cleverly told tale of forty-something pottery teacher Sheba Hart who has an affair with one of her pupils and finds herself the centre of a disapproving media furore. The genius of the book is its narrative device. The story is told by Sheba's colleague, history teacher Barbara Covett: approaching retirement age, bored by most of her other colleagues, desperately lonely, and also, we discover, prone to forming intense friendships with other women, and then falling out with them - or somehow making them fall out with her.

Barbara takes on the task of setting the media's warped record straight, of telling the story of Sheba's affair with fifteen-year-old Steven Connolly as it really is. She doesn't hold back, however, when she thinks Sheba has acted wildly, or foolishly, or reprehensibly. The sense of something sinister lurks behind Barbara's narrative throughout. Having made us side with Barbara initially - against the lowering of standards and general rudeness of the modern education system (and indeed, modern living in general), Heller's art is to then subtly reverse our loyalties, so that by the end we too see the narrator through the eyes of the people around her who find her somewhat disturbing.

Notes on a Scandal was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and has just been longlisted for the Orange Prize here in the UK. It's a brilliant read (I read it in two days flat, which is good going for me). And it's the kind of book that might just become the next Lucky Bones: initially recommended by a friend, and then bought or borrowed and passed on or recommended... ad infinitum.

Susan Tranter

Online Reader in Residence

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