Notes on a Scandal
First edition UK cover
|
|
| Author | Zoë Heller |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Publisher | Viking |
|
Publication date
|
June 5, 2003 (UK) |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover and Paperback) |
| Pages | 256 pp |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 51912896 |
Notes on a Scandal (What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal in the U.S.) is a 2003 novel by Zoë Heller. It is about a female teacher at a London comprehensive school who begins an affair with an underage pupil. The novel was shortlisted for the 2003 Man Booker Prize.
A film version was released in 2006, starring Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett. The film received four Academy Award nominations, including nominations for Dench and Blanchett.
Barbara, a veteran history teacher at a comprehensive school in London, is a lonely, unmarried woman in her early sixties, and she is eager to find a close friend. However, she reveals that she has been unable to make a previous friendship last as she was considered by previous friends to be domineering and demanding. Her former friend, teacher Jennifer Dodd, even threatened her with an injunction if she tried contacting her again. When Bathsheba "Sheba" Hart is hired as an art teacher, Barbara immediately feels that they might become close friends. When Sheba invites Barbara for Sunday lunch with her family, she is ecstatic and gives the lunch date enormous significance.
Initially unknown to Barbara, Sheba falls in love with a 15-year-old pupil, Steven Connolly, who is from a deprived background and has literacy problems. Although they frequently have sex in risky places, including at school and in the open on Hampstead Heath, the unlikely couple successfully conceal their affair from colleagues and family. During Barbara's first visit to Sheba's residence, she tells Barbara a highly expurgated version of what has happened between her and Connolly, claiming only that he has tried to kiss her and that she discouraged his advances. Barbara offers her some advice on how to cool the boy's ardour, and considers the matter closed.
Sheba confesses to Barbara that despite her apparently charmed life, she feels unfulfilled. Sheba has a difficult relationship with her rebellious seventeen-year-old daughter, Polly, whose youth and beauty only intensify her mother's own feelings of aging and waste. Sheba's husband, Richard, is significantly older than she is, and their relationship sometimes has a father-daughter element to it. Sheba's complaints trouble Barbara, who had considered Sheba to have the perfect family life.
...
Wikipedia