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

~ Zoe Heller (Author) "The other night, at dinner, Sheba talked about the first time that she and the Connolly boy kissed..." (more)
Key Phrases: travel cage, Old Hall, Dierdre Rickman, Elaine Clifford (more...)
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (105 customer reviews)


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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Subtitled Notes on a Scandal, Heller's engrossing second novel (after Everything You Know) is actually the story of two inappropriate obsessions-one a consummated affair between a high school teacher and her student, the other a secret passion harbored by a dowdy spinster. Sheba Hart, a new 40ish art teacher at a London school for working-class kids, has been arrested for having a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old student, Steven Connolly. The papers are having a blast. Sheba is herself the object of fascination for her older colleague and defender, Barbara Covett, whose interest in Sheba is not overtly romantic but has an erotic-and at times malevolent-intensity. Barbara narrates the story of Sheba's affair while inadvertently revealing her own obsession and her pivotal role in the scandal. The novel is gripping from start to finish; Heller brings vivid, nuanced characterizations to the racy story. Sheba is upper-class, arty, carelessly beautiful in floaty layers of clothing, with a full life of her own: doting older husband, impossible adolescent daughter, a son with Down's Syndrome, real if underdeveloped talent as a potter. She never got a driver's license, she tells Barbara, because she is always given rides; people want to do things for her. Barbara's respectable maiden-lady exterior hides a bitter soul that feasts on others' real and imagined shortcomings: one colleague's carelessly shaved armpits, another's risible baseball jacket. Even characters on stage for a minute (a Camden barman who hams it up for Barbara) live and breathe.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From The New Yorker

Barbara Covett, a sixtyish history teacher, is the kind of unmarried-woman-with-cat whose female friends sooner or later decide she is "too intense." Thus when a beautiful new pottery teacher, Sheba Hart—a "wispy novice with a tinkly accent and see-through skirts"—chooses Barbara as a confidante, she is deeply, even rather sinisterly, gratified. Sheba's secret is explosive: married with two kids, she is having an affair with a fifteen-year-old student. The novel, Heller's second, is Barbara's supposedly objective "history" of the affair and its eventual discovery, written furtively while she and her friend are holed up in a borrowed house, waiting for Sheba's court date. Barbara has appointed herself Sheba's "unofficial guardian," protecting her from the salivating tabloids. Equally adroit at satire and at psychological suspense, Heller charts the course of a predatory friendship and demonstrates the lengths to which some people go for human company.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 272 pages
  • Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.; 1st edition (August 1, 2003)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0805073337
  • ISBN-13: 978-0805073331
  • Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (105 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #771,975 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

More About the Author

Zoe Heller
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Customer Reviews

105 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.3 out of 5 stars (105 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
46 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars One of my favorite books this year, September 2, 2003
By sb-lynn (Santa Barbara, California United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   
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This book is highly recommended.
In a nutshell, Barbara Covett, is a 60ish spinster school teacher... opinionated, intelligent, and very lonely. She becomes good friends with Sheba Hart, a beautiful, popular, 42 year old new teacher who had just arrived at Barbara's school. Sheba has a scandalous affair with one of her young students, and the story is told from Barbara's point of view as the narrator.
When I heard about the plot of this book, I have to admit I wasn't all that interested in reading it. But I picked up the book and read the first page and found it utterly compelling and an engrossing and intelligent read.
Part of the brilliance of this novel is the way you learn about both characters by listening to the narrator, the aptly named Barbara Covett. All is not what it seems, and the author does a wonderful job making these characters very real people.
Heller does a wonderful job showing how single women relate to those married with children, and how people deal with loneliness and routine. She also shows how we make rationalizations about ourselves and our actions in order to justify our beliefs that we are good, honorable people.
I highly recommend this novel for any book clubs. It would make for a great discussion, and I think that everyone is going to have a different opinion about each of these two women. Not only is this novel an intelligent read, but it's a fun one also. This book is a page-turner that leaves you thinking about it, and wanting to talk about it with your friends..what more can you ask for?
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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Notes on a Scandal, May 4, 2005
By Jacquelyn (Coquitlam, British Columbia Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Notes on a Scandal (Paperback)
This was one of the best books I've ever read -- and I read a lot. It was astonishingly good. It's about 2 teachers at a Brtish public high school who develop a close friendship. One of them, however, has a history of obsessive behaviour with other friends she's had, and is really quite bizarre in her thoughts and behaviour. What makes this book so fascinating is it is this "weird" (for want of a better word) character (Barbara) who narrates the book; therefore, she thinks SHE is in control of the story, and the story as far as she's concerned is about the other main character's affair with one of the students at the school. But for the READER, the real story is Barbara herself. As the story progresses, she becomes increasingly more sinister, and it becomes impossible to put this book down. I don't want to write anymore and spoil any of what's in store for other readers. This book is simply not to be missed.
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars An intriguing little novel, September 24, 2006
By Gregory Baird (Morristown, NJ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)    (VINE VOICE)   
One goes into Zoe Heller's "What Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal," a novel with a blowout of a premise, with some heavy expectations. What you get is a slightly unexpected but nonetheless worthwhile and intriguing reading experience, even if you can't help but wish there had been just a little of the melodrama you had anticipated. Heller's narrative, centered on the scandal surrounding forty-one-year-old Sheba Hart -- who has been caught having a sexual relationship with a sixteen-year-old student at the school where she teaches pottery classes, is remarkably staid and free of soap opera theatrics (even though she does imbue her tale with a dose of humor for levity). Heller focuses less on the aftermath of Sheba getting caught than she does on the year and a half preceding the uproar -- the time period in which Sheba first caught the student's eye, slowly got drawn into the affair, and began to lose control to an obsession over her young lover. Heller is struggling to answer the question that she has posed in the title: what was this otherwise right-thinking woman doing getting involved with a student? She does a passable job hinting at how it happens, but never really overcomes the vagaries of her characters. In the end you have theories but no concrete rulings on the how and why of it. I personally appreciate some of the room left for conjecture, but I can see how others would be left frustrated and put off by the vagueness of it all. At any rate, it is quite interesting to follow Sheba's collision course for disaster. The novel also has an unexpected sub-plot involving Barbara Covett, the spinsterly narrator of the story who is harboring an obsession of her own -- on her friendship with Sheba. Because Barbara is busy narrating Sheba's story -- and remains thoroughly unaware of how odd her obsession is or of just how deep it seems to run -- you are only afforded glimpses of how or why she behaves the way that she does. Barbara is only seen through the prism of her relationship with Sheba, with only hints at her formative years with a poor family and an aggressively religious sister. This would make a great choice for a book club, because I am sure that every reader could take away a slightly different interpretation of this novel that would make for great discussions (or, potentially, arguments). A film adaptation is coming later this year, and I can't wait to see how Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench flesh out their characters, but I think that I will miss the way the novel allows you to come to your own conclusions.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A Small Masterpiece
I loved this book as much for what it doesn't do as much as for what it does. It is centered around an affair between a 41-year-old teacher and her 15-year-old student, but it... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Brooklynite

5.0 out of 5 stars BRILLIANT
In my reviews I am liberal with stars looking at the genre and going with of course, did I like it, would I recommend it. Read more
Published 1 month ago by James L. Woolridge

5.0 out of 5 stars Darkly Funny and Disturbing
Barbara Lovett, the first-person narrator of NOTES ON A SCANDAL, clearly has her own ideas about what constitutes friendship and good advice. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Graceann Macleod

5.0 out of 5 stars An eerie novel!
After reading my novel, Ride This Day Down Into Night, my agent suggested I read Zoe Heller's wonderful novel, Notes on a Scandal. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Gerald L. Dodge

5.0 out of 5 stars I laughed, I cried, I wasn't horrified
The subject matter sounds icky--middle-aged woman physically involved with a young boy. But, somehow, Zoe Heller makes this subject compelling, not horrifying, and I found it to... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Mrs. Smith

4.0 out of 5 stars "I'm really into you, Miss"
What Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal: A Novel
I saw a favorable mention of this Zoë Heller novel in Michiko Kakutani's review of Heller's more recent book, The... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Jay C. Smith

4.0 out of 5 stars Remarkable
This is definitely one of the best contemporary novels I've read in recent years. The quality of writing is remarkable and the subject matter is truly fascinating (at least to... Read more
Published 8 months ago by T

5.0 out of 5 stars This is one great book.
This is probably one of the best books I have ever read. I think that the way that Barbara's character was written was so dead on and so perfectly pathetically snarky that it... Read more
Published 10 months ago by N. Monroe

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect execution of a modestly ambitious novel
While this novel is ostensibly about an affair between a pretty 42-year-old teacher and her 15-year-old student, the real story, as is commonly the case with first-person... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Roy G. Biv

4.0 out of 5 stars This Novel Takes the Reader Into the Dark Places of the Soul
This is a well-written novel about a high school teacher who has an affair with one of her male students. Read more
Published 12 months ago by Bonnie Brody

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