[.ca] What Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal (ISBN 0786162368)

From Amazon.co.uk Review:
Zoe Heller juggles journalism and novel-writing successfully in What Was She Thinking?: 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

Psychological drama.....Addictive:
Only this week did I 'find myself' reading about a case in Florida where a teacher has been charged for having sex with her 14 year old student. We tend to throw out the higher moral ground here, insisting that this is just 'gutter press' coverage, titillating gossip, smutty news etc, but the fact remains that we love this kind of news. 'What was she thinking' starts out as a book under this guise.....story about a 41 year old pottery teacher who has an affair with one of her students. In a subtle change of course the book moves from this scandal to a more assertive reflection of the life/intrusion/spin of the narrator, Barbara Covett. By the second chapter the book was moving so fast (and I hate to use this cliché) I couldn't put it down. The style of writing reminded me of Rachel Cusk (The Country Life) but seemed pathetically reflective of the style used by a 60 something unmarried school teacher - laborious, detailed, academic. Zoë Heller uses her narrator brilliantly. Her brutal lonesomeness, insularity and selfishness coupled with her middleclass British snobbery had me laughing at times while at other times her reflections were worthy of something Jane Austen might think ("being female will do nothing for Sheba except deny her the grandeur of genuine villainy" and "It's always fascinating to hear bleeding hearts give their soppy rationalizations for delinquency"). However, don't let Barbara overcome you with her sensible shoes, stay at home Christmas celebrations, house cat etc. This woman is a self centered, opinionated bitch. You'll love to hate her. The end made me feel like I was reading a thriller and while I don't want to spoil it for you I felt shell shocked when finished. This is a book about class perceptions, female friendships(!), psychological blackmail, isolation, envy, betrayal and illicit sex. It was addictive.

Sardonic and Sly:
This book was recommended to me by one of my younger friends, and I'll freely admit that I met her suggestion with more than a smattering of hesitation. After all, the story is one of a married woman who becomes involved with a much underaged student, the involvment of which brings her to test in the media and eventually proves the ruin of her. Yet, my friend hadn't ever given a disappointing suggestion, so I picked up the book and read it through. It is raw, and some of the more graphic descriptions of the physical nature of the affair might prove shocking to sensitive readers. But stick it through and you shall be rewarded with a look into the reasoning, or rather lack of, that provides the impetus for a desire so overwhelming it must be acted upon, even at the cost of one's vocation and family. The entire affair was plainly wrong, and early on an astute reader shall be led to realise this, if simply for the fact that nothing in this book is quite as it should be, or more plainly, as it appears on the surface. There is a deep-running current here which is slowly divulged and left to the reader to make heads or tails of. The friendship between Sheba, the adulteress, and Barbara, the lonely repressed spinster. The family ties displayed by Sheba's family. The boy Sheba becomes involved with, and obsessed by. This underlying offness, this kiltered viewpoint, is remarkable in its keenness, and sets one deliciously on edge. For anyone up to a challenge, and unafraid to step out of their comfort zone, here is a read for you.

enjoy long weekend with a book:
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.

Controversy from Clever Prospective:
I enjoyed "What Was She Thinking" not because it deals with a controversy but because of the clever way in which it does so. Rather than take a hardcore expose approach to the story of a female teacher's forbidden affair with an underage male student, author Zoe Heller cleverly puts the voice of the story in the hands of a third party, a lonely older teacher Barbara Covett. Beyond being a mere observer, but not quite a participant, the character of Covett has her own unique connection to the story that makes her involvement more than that of an impassive narrator. The story telling device as a clever means of dealing with risque material is the same one used by Rikki Lee Travolta in the novel "My Fractured Life" where he chronicles the rise and fall of an ultimately suicidal actor from the prospective of the man who finds the body. Although not an easy narrative style to master, Heller uses it with the same life-like flourish of "My Fractured Life" that almost makes you feel it's a true account.

Careless Love:
What a good book! Too bad it takes place in England. It seems to me there was a case similar in USA where the teacher was jailed, resumed affair upon release, became pregnant, was jailed again. The boy's mother was vexed but no one could keep them apart. Interesting is that all Heller's characters have their motivations revealed. However, they do seem rather shallow people all trying to put their own little goals into action, especially the main teacher-lover. But she is usually in a daze and becomes a stalker when she is dumped. The wisest one may be the angry daughter. Who wouldn''t be angry living in the midst of such oafs?