Rating: 
Summary: Heller has created a truly memorable character
Review: In England, where it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Zoë Heller's second novel was titled simply NOTES ON A SCANDAL. But her American publisher, Henry Holt, restyled it WHAT WAS SHE THINKING? and relegated the drab NOTES to a subtitle.Such is a rare case when business beats artistry: Heller's original title is humdrum and unevocative, while WHAT WAS SHE THINKING? is both colloquial and sensational, a tabloid headline that aptly captures the novel's tabloid affair. The American title is all the more fitting because WHAT WAS SHE THINKING? is an extremely American novel, despite being set in England. Heller, who wrote about Hollywood and celebrity culture in her lackluster debut, EVERYTHING YOU KNOW, finds inspiration for this novel in the 1997 case of Mary Kay Latourneau, a Washington State teacher who had an affair and two children with a teenage student. At the center of the scandal is the obviously named Bathsheba Hart, a naïve pottery teacher at St. George's Academy in London. Mobbed by undisciplined teenagers and cowed by teachers' lounge politics, Sheba befriends a fifteen-year-old remedial student named Steven Connolly. At first she is drawn to him because he is one of the few students who does not terrorize her. He has a talent for drawing, and in several after-school sessions she encourages his artistic tendencies, exposing him to the work of Degas and Manet. Soon, however, their relationship leads to trysts behind the pottery kiln and secret rendezvous in Hampstead Heath. Their affair and the ensuing media frenzy it ignites are recounted by Barbara Covett, a lonely history teacher who craves Sheba's friendship. Barbara is a catty narrator, disdainful of her students and suspicious of her colleagues, and her observations and petty critiques of her surroundings are feisty, witty and endlessly entertaining. If Heller finds inspiration in U.S. tabloids, she is similarly fascinated with Vladimir Nabokov, who himself was interested in America's garish pop culture. She intends Sheba's affair with the student to suggest a gender-switched LOLITA, and the relationship between the two teachers mirrors that of the protagonists in PALE FIRE: Barbara is Charles Kinbote to Sheba's John Shade. She is ostensibly recording the scandal and defending her friend for posterity, but in the process she takes center stage. WHAT WAS SHE THINKING? is less about Sheba's untoward feelings toward a student than about Barbara's increasing dependence on Sheba as a balm against her own loneliness and "drip, drip of long-haul, no-end-in-sight solitude." Heller plumbs remarkable depths in Barbara's isolation from the world and in her murky relationship with her coworker. Towards the end of the novel, Barbara confesses that her response to her friend's affair and her actions to expose it have been reprehensible: "If I seem to take particular care in describing how I came to act as I did, it is not because I hope to exculpate myself, but rather because I wish to be as rigorously and unsparingly truthful as possible." Yet, Barbara is at her most sympathetic when she is at her lowest point. Her actions may be driven by half-defined desires for Sheba, but Heller delves deep into her character and makes her fully human. Of course, WHAT WAS SHE THINKING? cannot live up to its source material: it lacks the profound inventiveness and meaning of Nabokov's novels and the real-life scandal of Latourneau's story. But the novel does have its comparatively modest triumphs. By letting her narrator outshine the salacious scandal she chronicles, Heller creates in Barbara a memorable character with a unique perspective and a resounding voice. --- Reviewed by Stephen M. Deusner
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: enjoy long weekend with a book
Review: Nashville City Paper BookClub Column - May 27, 2004 What Was She Thinking- Notes on a Scandal by Zoë Heller (Henry Holt) will soon be out in paperback. The author of Everything You Want to Know manages to make her characters comical and creepy.
Saralee Terry Woods is President of BookMan/BookWoman Books in Nashville, and Larry D. Woods is an attorney.
Rating:
Summary: Weird is Good
Review: Notes of a Scandal is weird. It's about a teacher having an affair with a student. That is weird. Sometimes weird makes the best stories though. I actually really enjoyed it. Weird can be good, if handled correctly by a skilled writer. This qualifies. If you like the kind of off-center books like Running With Scissors and My Fractured Life, you should try this one.
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: Gripping, literate, insightful and impossible to put down.
Review: The ostensible scandal of this story is an affair between Sheba, a married teacher at a London secondary school, and one of her students. But Heller's real subject is the poisonous friendship between Sheba and the novel's narrator, a sardonic old spinster named Barbara. Barbara's need for a friend is as desperate as Sheba's for a lover, and she is much more ruthless in making sure she gets what she wants. Filled with droll wit and insightfully drawn minor characters, WHAT WAS SHE THINKING is a treat for those who think fiction, like revenge, is a dish best served cold.
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.
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