Notes on a Scandal

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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Zoe Heller's second novel is the sort of book you get through in one sitting. It's centred around Barbara and Sheba, teachers at St George's, where Sheba, the new pottery teacher, livens up the proceedings at the school, first with her charisma and then with her affair with a student. Barbara, the 'incubus' as she is described, is an uncomfortable and stifling woman, but her humanity has her jumping out of the page at you: you've met her before, you didn't like her and were probably scared of her. Both women are very ordinary, making their complex psychologies all the more disturbing. In fact, all of Heller's characters are alarmingly recognizable, and the situations so familiar and real that you feel as though you are intruding upon something dangerous; the more you read the more you want to hide from the plot and the people she has created. The 'notes on a scandal' are Barbara's account of events as Sheba's circumstances hurtle out of control, with Barbara her unflinching, irrepressible stalwart, her 'notes' providing a turning point in the pair's unhealthy and compelling relationship. On the surface, Sheba may appear to be the only guilty party but those around, including her husband, other teachers and the media, all have a part to play in or something to gain from her downfall. Heller has written about the power of passion and the horrors of repression in an earthy, stingingly humorous satire that puts every other book of this ilk in the shadows. This novel is guaranteed to have you hooked from the first word to the last. Simply genius. (Kirkus UK)