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

Rating:
Summary: Engrossing and thought-provoking
Review: I wasn't certain I was going to like this book when I began it. It starts out in the present tense, a conceit that I generally dislike. However, it soon changes, as the author alternates tenses to differentiate between the narration of past and present events. And then it works.

The story is of a forty-ish school teacher who has an affair with one of her students, and is told by a sixty-ish school teacher who has befriended her. As the book starts, the affair has already been discovered and Sheba is out on bail pending trial, living in her brother's home with her friend Barbara. Barbara is writing a journal about the events and her relationship with Sheba, and that is how the story unfolds.

All of Heller's characters are realistic, from the inarticulate 15-year-old with a crush on his teacher, to the teacher herself, new at the job, anxious to do good and make good, to her rebellious teen-aged daughter, to the pompous headmaster and the spinster friend. It is the character of Barbara, however, who is most interesting, despite the rather stereotypical "repressed lesbian spinster with cat" image. She is very clever, dead on with her analysis of other people and their actions, yet totally oblivious to her own inappropriate behavior and full of self-justification. She is at once sympathetic, and not sympathetic, a very neat stunt to pull off!

The same is true of Sheba. The knee-jerk reaction is to think, well, she should have known better than to have it off with a student. But the situation is far more complicated than that. As Barbara muses, "The sorts of young people who become involved in this kind of imbroglio are usually pretty wily about sexual matters. I don't mean just that they're sexually experienced -- although that is often the case. I mean that they possess some instinct, some natural talent, for sexual power play. For various reasons, our society has chosen to classify people under the age of sixteen as children. In most of the rest of the world, boys and girls are understood to become adults somewhere around the age of twelve. . .We may have very good reasons for choosing to prolong the privileges and protections of childhood. But at least let us acknowledge what we are up against when attempting to enforce that extension. Connolly was officially a minor, and Sheba's actions were, officially speaking, exploitative; yet any honest assessment of their relationship would have to acknowledge not only that Connolly was acting of his own volition but that he actually wielded more power in the relationship than Sheba." That is often the case.

A very good read.

Rating:
Summary: "Her little Helen Keller in a sea of Yahoos."
Review: In Zoe Heller's novel "What Was She Thinking?" Sheba Hart, a married pottery teacher in her 40s, begins her first teaching job at St.George's comprehensive school in London. Sheba is a well-meaning but ineffectual teacher. Other staff members even observe clay fights taking place in Sheba's classroom, and one teacher, after finding Sheba "cowering, tearfully behind her desk" notes that "it was Lord of the Flies in there." When 15-year-old Steven Connolly approaches Sheba, she befriends him. He's from a rather poor working class family, and at first Sheba feels a bit sorry for him. It's a slippery slope for Sheba, and small improprieties soon explode into a full-blown affair.

In a stroke of pure genius, author, Heller creates the story as told by Sheba's fellow teacher, Barbara Covett. Barbara has an 'old school' approach to the pupils. She is impatient with the notion of self-esteem, and thinks education should return to the three Rs. Barbara is also rather opposed to the silly political agenda of the headmaster, "petty despot" Mr Pabblem, and she has no mercy when passing judgment on Pabblem's "Morale Watch" Programme. To Barbara, a secondary school "is a sort of hormonal soup" and things eventually happen in this sort of steamy atmosphere. The title, "What Was She Thinking?" may refer to the self-destruction and social suicide behind Sheila's affair, but it may also refer to the obsessive machinations of Barbara Covett--an odd, lonely, love-starved spinster. To Barbara, Sheba seems "like some magical lake in a fairy tale: nothing could disturb the mirror-calm of her surface."

Barbara is the perfect narrator. She has a wicked, malicious mind, and is no respecter of persons. She's also obstinate and opinionated. Barbara dissects and analyzes Sheba's troubled home life after just one evening in the Hart's fancy house. She finds Sheba's much-older husband pompous and condescending. With merciless ferocity, Barbara describes the dullness and the politics of the staff room--including the slovenly, unattractive male teachers who pine after Sheba. Barbara's narration removes the novel to another, more complex plane, and instead of reading the story of just another inappropriate relationship, we see the affair through Barbara's entertaining and skewed interpretations. Barbara isn't by any stretch of the imagination a nice person--in fact she can be devious. Sheba is a 'nice' person, but she is also weak and malleable. Barbara is one of the most intriguing fictional characters I've discovered in a long time. She's unattractive, not very nice, and yet at the same time, her thoughts are wickedly amusing and utterly fascinating.

"What Was She Thinking?" was shortlisted for the 2003 Booker prize, and I'd have to say it's one of the most unusual, witty, and fascinating books I've read this year. By creating a female transgressor, Heller also forces us to examine some of society's stereotypes. If you enjoy novels written by Muriel Spark, there's a good chance, you'll enjoy "What Was She Thinking?" This book is a marvelous read, and I simply cannot recommend it highly enough--displacedhuman




Rating:
Summary: Anatomy of a scandal
Review: It seems that the Man Booker Prize of 2003 shorlist was focusing on contemporary issues. From teenaged sniper to sexual scandal, the list gave an interesting scope in the contemporary English literature. A previous winner like Margaret Atwood was side by side of newcomers, like DBC Pierre. Perhaps the most surprising novel among the five finalists was Zoë Heller's "What was she thinking?: Notes on a Scandal".

The prize went to Pierre's "Vernon God Little" -- but I believe it got the Prize more because of marketing rather than for its literary qualities, which are virtually none. The real winner was in Heller's sophomore effort. Dealing with a complex and contemporary theme, the writer never fails to achieve high with her sharp cutting prose.

Drawing a complex panel of loneliness and delusion, Heller created some of the most vivid characters of the contemporary literature. The best one is Barbara, the narrator. She is an elderly lady who is cares only about her life until she becomes friends with Sheba, a new teacher in the school where Barbara works.

But Sheba also becomes a very close friend of one of her teenage students. Actually, they become lovers -- that is where the scandal is placed. Out of sheer jealousy, Barbara's acts become more and more dangerous, not only to her but also to Sheba. In a society where every dirty detail sells tabloids, the imminent scandal is set.

Given Heller work as a columnist, she can speak of media as someone who knows it. Her insightful prose never fails to bring up the issue of what makes newspaper be sold. Readers want juicy details -- even the made-up ones. They don't care whether the story is true or not, as long as it has sex involved.

But, the writer could easily have fallen into the trap she set -- write a book about the media. But she did not. "What was she thinking?: Notes on a Scandal" is a novel about the human condition, about life, about getting old -- and what we expect from society and what society expects from us. Heller is no moralist, she, most of the time, is a reporter, using Barbara's voice.

The further the narrative advances, the darker the story gets. Some compared Barbara to Tom Ripley -- and they are not wrong. She is a female Ripley. For her there is no sense of being harmful to achieve what she wants. On the other hand, Sheba is also very egotistical -- and this makes her very human as well.

In the end, there is no right, no wrong. There are only people trying to survive their complicated lives. Heller is no easy to them either. In her word people get involved in dangerous situations. And she, as the writer, doesn't make those situations any easy -- this way she can please not only the literary type of readers, but also the tabloid fans. Heller is a writer to watch.


Rating:
Summary: An enjoyable read
Review: It's clever, bright and well written. Try not to read too many reviews because it's fun the way the plot unfolds.

Rating:
Summary: a believable novel of obsession
Review: Schoolteacher Barbara Covett has aged gracefully and alone in the stagnant environment of a British public high school. Her world is a quiet one; she critically observes but does not interact with her coworkers, and goes home every night to her quiet apartment and her cat. Sheba Hart - younger, beautiful, breezy, and posh - shakes up the entire school when she becomes the pottery teacher. For the other teachers, she is an object of jealousy or desire. For Barbara, she is a preoccupation. And for one teenage boy, she is a conquest.

"What Was She Thinking?" is Barbara's tale of the events that unfold when Sheba enters an affair with a student. It is the story of Sheba's inappropriate and extramarital liason, but it is also the story of Barabara's growing obsession with her friend. It addresses the boundaries of obsession and lust, the line between the transgressive and the mundane. The characters are vividly and believably drawn: even minor characters are interesting and dimensional, and the two principals, despite their obvious peculiarities, are familiar and sympathetic. The author does an excellent job of bringing this story of obsession, which could easily seem bizarre, into the realm of the quotidien.

Rating:
Summary: Sinfully sinister!
Review: Sheba Hart, a 40-something art teacher at a private school in London, is arrested for having a sexual relationship with one of her 15-year-old students. The story is told from the perspective of Barbara Covett, a spintster colleague of Sheba's who has an unhealthy obsession with her friend and plays a surprising role in the scandal.

"What Was She Thinking?" is an unusual and clever book that takes a very taboo subject and handles it with candidness and a bit of wry humor. The characters are fascinating and unbelievably flawed, which makes for an even more interesting read.

Rating:
Summary: Vicious little gem
Review: The other reviewers here have described this book and its brilliance better than I could. I just wanted to add my vote. I especially loved how the author layers each character's personality and emotions and actually approximates the complexity of real people and their relationships. Basheba, the main character, is sweet, dippy, and tremendously self-absorbed. You want to judge the characters for getting themselves involved in such lurid situations, but Heller makes it impossible for you not to sympathize with each one to some degree.

I was also struck by the similarities of the teaching staff at the high school and the student body. The teaching pool is churned by resentment against authority, petty jealousy, and nasty rumors. Everyone will remember their own high school teachers and wince. The sweet, utterly ineffectual pottery teacher, the old battleaxe with a face of iron, the high-minded, self-aggrandizing principal all make appearances here.

Something else I didn't see mentioned here was the fact that this is about more than one age-inappropriate relationship. Sheba is married to a man twenty years her senior, and of course, Barbara, the woman obsessed with her, is the same age as her husband. Heller made me think a lot about how aribitrary our affections are, and the directions they take when perhaps when no "normal" objects to which to direct our feelings present themselves.

My only complaint was that it was not longer. Really. I would happily have read about Barbara's horrific loneliness and her character assassinations for another three hundred pages.

Rating:
Summary: Finest British prose style for decades
Review: The precision and intelligence of Zoe Heller's prose style is wonderfully satisfying, and it is through this style that Heller is able to give her narrator Barbara such sharply witty observations of her fellow teachers and in general of the flabby pretentiousness of so many self-admiring contemprorary civic attitudes. But it's not all wit. Barbara makes wrenchingly accurate reports on the state of spinsterbood. It's as if Gissing's ODD WOMEN have generated a grandchild with Gissing's brilliant sociological insight and determination to articulate it.

Of course nearly all the reviews have made the point that Barbara the narrator is unstable and unreliable. But if she is, she is so because she hopes so much (and why should we say 'too much' when in fact she does achieve her ambition of forming a close relationship with Sheba?). Barbara knows she hopes. So she isn't really unreliable, she isn't really unstable. She is a good deal more sane than, for instance, the head of her comprehensive school, who is a limp Blairite driven by utterly insensitive ambition. I believe, actually, that Barbara is also a good deal more sane than most of her reviewers. Yes, sometimes one is reminded of Kingsley Amis, but Barbara has a much more elegant mind than Amis. Plus she is a realist rather than a comedian. I personally wished for much more of Barbara's bracing social comment.

As for the scandal of an unworldly pottery teacher falling for a working-class fifteen-year-old sexist boy, well, really, there is no scandal except perhaps the scandal that there are readers, especially in the USA, who think that such a relationship is scandalous and who think that the boy not the teacher is the victim.

Heller's is a potentially major talent and anyone who is genuinely interested in the welfare of the English language will rejoice that at last we have a novelist who writes this well.

Rating:
Summary: One of my favorite books this year
Review: 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?

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining and Thought Provoking Reading
Review: This is a great novel if you're looking for something a little saucy and out of the ordinary. The characters are undeniably flawed, which is what makes them so fascinating. There are some really funny parts, as well as some heart wrenching moments. Sheba's teenaged daughter is hilarious and written very well. I would highly recommend this book for the beach, airplane, or similar situation.