Notes on a Scandal [Paperback]

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.

"An intense, witty, literary page-turner"--"Entertainment Weekly" "Equally adroit at satire and at psychological suspense, Zoe Heller charts the course of a predatory friendship and demonstrates the lengths to which some people go for human company."--"The New Yorker"
 
"A deliciously perverse, laugh-out-loud-funny novel."--"Vogue"
 
"A triumph of intelligence and narrative control."--"The Times" (London)
 
"Heller is a great ventriloquist of character, and as the unhinged curator of the Sheba affair, Barbara is painfully note perfect."--"The Washington Post Book World"
 
"Wicked and wonderful social satire."--"Glamour"

Fascinating, brilliant, horribly addictive Guardian Superbly gripping. One of the most compelling books I've read in ages Daily Telegraph Deliciously sinister Daily Mail Excellent. An undercurrent of subtle malice, cleverly controlled by Heller Evening Standard Brilliant, nasty, gripping -- Zadie Smith Observer Reads like a nose through someone else's bathroom cabinet: full of guilty insights and delicious snobbery Independent A subtle study in obsession and loneliness ... my take-it-to-the-beach recommendation -- Monica Ali Guardian Summer Reading The most gripping book I have read so far this year Independent on Sunday --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

When the new teacher first arrives, Barbara immediately senses that this woman will be different from the rest of her staff-room colleagues. But Barbara is not the only one to feel that Sheba is special, and before too long Sheba is involved in an illicit affair with a pupil. Barbara finds the relationship abhorrent, of course, but she is the only adult in whom Sheba can properly confide. So when the liaison is found out and Sheba's life falls apart, Barbara is there...

Zoe Heller's first novel, Everything You Know, was published by Viking in 1999. Zoe Heller writes a column for the Daily Telegraph and was columnist of the year for 2002. She lives in New York.