Rating: 
Summary: Unmenmorable but an easy read
Review: I have read better and I expected more from this book. It is weird and good but it doesn't leave you with anything special or any deep insights.
Rating: 
Summary: a superbly written story of friendship, scandal .. and life
Review: I purchased 'Notes on a Scandal' (..the British title) as part of a collection of books nominated for the 2003 Man Booker Prize (British Commonwealth equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize), a total of six books. I've read three so far, including the winner 'Vernon God Little'. By a wide margin 'Notes on a Scandal' is the superior novel, much to my surprise.Firstly, I did not expect a book about a teacher having an affair with a 15 year old boy, a student at her school, to be particularly interesting; such scandals are not too uncommon, and I find them to be rather distasteful and sad. And while on the surface 'Notes on a Scandal' is nothing more than notes-of-a-scandal (notes taken from the teacher's best and perhaps only friend), it deeply chronicles the emotions and lives of both the teacher and her friend. The characterizations are brilliant, the prose is sublime without being pretentious (..no need to have a dictionary handly). This is the best book I've read in quite some time; I'd have to imagine a film adaptation has to be in the cards. Bottom line: deceptively wonderful. Strongly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: a great winter read
Review: I read this book mostly in class-- it's satisfying and short enough to finish in just a few sittings. (or, in 3 classes) The story is compelling in that it takes taboo headlines and makes them human, and I loved watching Barbara, the narrator, slowly unravel and show off her true colors. The writing is great, the characters-- even the minor ones-- all come alive, and the ending is chilling!
Rating:
Summary: What WAS she thinking????
Review: I think I am in the minority here, but I didnt like this book. It is well written, but I found both characters terribly annoying, each for their own reasons. Barbara is weak and pathetic and lives her life through other people, but perhaps that is the reason she is Sheba's friend. And I found Sheba to be an unbelievable character, not because she has had an affair with a student, but because she just seems so clueless about life. I got very irritated with both women and found their whole relationship to be entirely false. Sure it is well written and witty, but I couldnt wait to finish it and start something else.
Rating:
Summary: Complex and Thought Provoking Novel
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed Notes on a Scandal and was hooked from the first page. The language Zoë Heller used was beautiful, with really original descriptive phrases and lovely metaphors. The characters were very realistic and I liked the fact that the setting was very ordinary - a school in England. It was great to read something which was set in simple and familiar surroundings because it made the story seem very real and intriguing - all those hidden passions and desires hidden behind the hustle and bustle of the school corridors! The plot is deceptively simple: a forty something teacher called Sheba has been having affair with one of her pupils. The narrator is Barbara, a friend to the teacher in question. She is a complex character who veers from being endearingly normal to flashes of her darker side. The book is set after the affair has come to light and Sheba is now living with Barbara. As the novel progresses we dip back into the past to find out how the affair progressed and what part Barbara had to play in it all. I thought the author did a great job at capturing the day-to-day lives of the characters: the overheard comments that circulate as gossip, the daily annoyances that grow and grow until boiling point, the complexities of family life and, in contrast, single life. I was particularly challenged by Sheba's affair with the schoolboy and how to react to this, both in terms of how she should be 'punished' and whether she 'took advantage' of the boy or not. Of course, the issue of whether a male who has an affair with an underage girl would be treated much more severely than Sheba was also of great interest. Overall I highly recommend this book to one and all. It was stimulating, intriguing and complex and I'll definitely read it again. JoAnne
Rating:
Summary: Outstsanding
Review: I thought this novel was superb and I congratulate the author on her wonderful prose and dialogue. She also pulled off what I consider to be somewhat of a difficult trick in novels told in the first person--namely to like the book and yet simultaneously not like the narrator. I say this is difficult because in a first person book, everything that you learn and everything that is being told to you is coming through the mouth of the narrator. Thus if there is an insightful observation or a witty apercu, that is coming from the narrator. So if you like the book, that means that the narrator has told a good story and it is logical to assume from that that you would in turn like the narrator (if nothing else because you like his or her mind for being able to tell such good story). In this book, Barbara as NARRATOR is a very talented and admirable individual. However, Barbara as a PERSON is something else altogether. Not loathsome exactly, but certainly not admirable either. Moreover, the fact that she seems fairly self-aware with regard to her own foibles and shortcomings doesn't really fix the situation. I also thought that the title was a very clever double-entendre. You think it means one thing for most of the story and then, by the end, we realize that it probably means a second thing as well. Anyway, a job well done.
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: Not just Nabokov, but...
Review: I'm surprised that more people haven't noted the Muriel Spark-ish political twist to the character of Barbara, Heller's older, lovelorn, unreliable narrator, who serves first as confidant to and then as betrayer of Sheba. This is the Monica Lewinsky story as narrated by Linda Tripp--a fact Heller pointedly underscores, I think, by setting the book in 1997 and 1998. In any case, it's a wonderfully tart and nasty novel--even the jacket design is witty.
Rating:
Summary: Tiered Tale of Love and Obsession
Review: Imagine the blackest comedy you can, and you'll get the general feel of this novel. At the center of the story is a young teacher's lusty affair with one of her students. But layered with that is the narrator, (a fellow teacher, spinster, and friend of the accused) who in relaying the events, reveals her own version of obsession and love. I have to admit I found myself laughing out loud at times at Barbara's self involved observations. Yet as the book progressed, I found myself increasingly uncomfortable with all of the players and their actions, and by the end felt an overwhelming need to shower it all off.
Rating:
Summary: More than first appearances show
Review: In Britain the publishers have stuck with the original, less sensational title of 'Notes on a Scandal'. A story based on contemporary events, the bare outline of this story would be that it is about a female teacher who has a sexual relationship with an underage student, and on discovery is vilified by the press and society. However, this book is a lot more subtle and clever than that. The author has chosen to tell the story from the viewpoint of Barbara, a near-retirement aged spinster who teaches at the same school as Sheba, the teacher who has the affair. In unravelling Sheba's story, Barbara also reveals her own story, which has as many creepy undercurrents as Sheba's. As the story goes along, we come to see how Barbara has turned her friendship with Sheba into an all-encompassing obsession, and we also discover that this is not the first time this has happened. While portraying herself as a benevolent helpmeet, Barbara lets slip occasionally, and we see that her friendship with Sheba is not quite as charitable as she makes out; rather, Barbara is using Sheba as much as Sheba is using Barbara. Not only that, Barbara obviously sees herself as superior to Sheba, and builds her own self confidence by denigrating those around her. While other author's may have taken the road of trying to make Barbara sympathetic, explaining away her less than pleasant traits, Heller manages to write a thoroughly nasty character for the reader to enjoy, and this is something that takes writerly skill. This is a particularly British novel - the thinly veiled contempt Barbara shows for her 'friend' is a particularly ironic, biting kind you find in various levels of British society. This book also portrays the British media's obsession with scandal and the tacky headline realistically. No one comes out of this book looking good - Sheba looks like a petulant, childish woman having an ill-conceived mid-life crisis; her husband comes across as a bore; her boy-lover as an uninteresting chancer; her daughter as a spoilt cow. And Barbara, though she tells the story, comes across as the worst of all - a human leech that seems at her happiest when those around her are at their lowest. Note: look out for how Sheba's secret becomes public - even if it is not surprising, it will probably still come as a surprise!
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