What Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal: A Novel

This was my first time reading Zoe Heller and I thoroughly enjoyed the story and her writing style. The story did feel like it was missing something... anything, really, and the end was a bit of a let down after all the time invested.

In Notes On A Scandal, Zoë 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.

I don't know what to make of this beautifully written book. The plot device, stated clearly at the beginning, is that Sheba has told Barbara her story so many times and in so many different ways, that Barbara knows it better than she does (reminding me of Affliction, a story told by the brother of the main character). The prose reminds me of Anita Brookner, but instead of taking the side of the hapless victim, we hear the voice of the predator for once. My only question, is why Barbara, aptly named an incubus by Sheba's husband Richard, would want Sheba after sucking all of the juices out of her? Why not go after fresher meat?

Zoe Heller's first person narrative is simply the best of its kind. A smooth, richly textured, compelling read. Not since Michael Chabon's 'Wonder Boys' has there been such a highly entertaining and genuinely engrossing literary novel. Heller's command of the English language is unparalleled.

I had some qualms about enjoying this because we are invited to laugh at, and to disapprove of, a villain, Barbara Covett, who suffers the stigmas of being elderly, female and unmarried. She is the first person narrator, what is known in the writing business as an unreliable narrator. She describes her attraction to Sheba, who is a fellow teacher in a chaotic English comprehensive (ages 11 to 18 year) school and who is having an affair with a fifteen year old male pupil. Although she is often made to sound ridiculous and unkind, Barbara Covett is given some good lines. When she acidly demolishes the pretensions and double-talk of unrealistic school administrators we (unless we are school administrators) want to stand up and cheer. Her struggles to comfort her dying cat, and her memories of her traumatic childhood are poignant. She takes over and manipulates the naïve impulsive Sheba and is responsible for her exposure and downfall. Neither of the pair is aware of any wrongdoing. It would be great book to give to anyone you wanted to dissuade from a career in teaching.