Notes on a Scandal - Zoe Heller

A novel which questions our perceptions of friendship, family and sexuality, Notes on a Scandal is a read which reveals the weaknesses we expose ourselves to by trusting those who appear to be our confidant.

It is written in the first person in the voice of Barbara Covett, a cold, old-fashioned comprehensive school teacher and spinster, who is writing an account of the fate which befell her colleague and friend Sheba Hart. Early on, the reader is told that Sheba is in fact the infamous art teacher convicted of sexually assaulting her 15-year-old pupil Steven Connolly. The novel is an account of the circumstances that lead to the affair, its exposure and its effect on Sheba's life all from Barbara's skewed point of view.

From its first pages, the novel is dripping with malice thanks to Barbara's impossible standards, obsessional codes of conduct and complete contempt for every person around her. At first this contempt also extends to Sheba, who Barbara silently derides for her see-through skirts, her messy buns and, most importantly, her lack of control of her pupils. But this contempt ebbs away when she sees that Sheba distances herself from staff alliegances. It also disappears after Barbara's plot to reveal that Sheba's children are privately educated falls flat in the staff room when Sheba reveals her son Ben has Down Syndrome. After Barbara helps Sheba control a wild class, the women strike up an unlikely friendship. Sheba begins implicitly trusting the woman who will ultimately machinate her downfall.

As the novel progresses, it reveals snapshots of Barbara's meticulously structured and unhealthily intense lifestyle. She agonises over what to wear to Sheba's informal dinner and berates herself for buying lilac sandals with bows. When the sandals cause a blister which bleeds so badly Sheba gives her a plaster, Barbara sees it as a physical punishment for her vanity. Throughout the novel, Barbara is calculated, remote and often emotionless. But the biggest insight into her emotions happens when she discovers her cat Portia is dying. She is consumed with grief, lovingly cooking a sausages-in-butter last supper for her only companion for the past 12 years. The fact Barbara feels like this about a cat is significant. Unlike people, animals are constant, loyal and cannot infringe the layers of social codes she has constructed.

Through Barbara's eyes, Sheba is willowy, idealistic and ethereal, desperate to help her students and "make a difference". Married at 20 to an older man Richard, she put her dreams of being an artist on hold to raise her children Polly and Ben. Beautiful, tall and slim, Sheba is desperately frightened of losing her looks. She is intimidated by the blossoming beauty of her daughter Polly and feels flattered by Steven's crush and the attention he lavishes upon her. Desperate to feel young again, she gives into her sexual attraction to him and their illicit, illegal relationship blossoms. In her desperation, she overlooks his immaturities, focuses on his nearly-manly body and lets herself believe it is love to justify what she is doing. She retains this delusional almost holy perception of the relationship long after it is revealed, making a sculpture of the two of them together modelled like a Madonna and her child.

It is in the character of Steven that the novel forces the reader to ask many questions about sexuality and where the line between a legal and illegal relationship is drawn. In the court case, and its racy tabloid coverage, Sheba is the seducer, taking away Steven's innocence. But in Barbara's testimony, Steven is the pursuer. Sexually experienced, he makes the first move and seemingly lavishes in the relationship until he bores of her. But the reader has to ask whether this version of events can be trusted. The reader is only given an account from Sheba, which is transcribed by Barbara. There is no account from Steven himself. Even when the affair is revealed, it is Steven's mother who confronts Sheba, painting a tale of her son sobbing at his loss of innocence.

On the question of where the line between legal and illegal can be drawn, the reader must consider Sheba's relationship with her husband Richard. Richard was Sheba's lecturer and they married when she was just 20. Like Sheba, he was her teacher. Like Sheba's relationship with Connolly, there is a significant age gap. But by Sheba being a few years older and by being conducted outside of the context of school, their relationship is legal, accepted (although, significantly, not by Sheba's mother) and given the ultimate stamp of approval from society: marriage. Twenty years on, she feels bored, stifled and unappreciated and repeats the cycle herself with a much more dangerous affair.

Alongside the issue of what society deems sexually unacceptable is the issue of class. It is a central theme throughout the novel. Sheba is the daughter of a world-famous economist. She lives in a massive Victorian house and enjoys a never-a-care middle class lifestyle. Being the model of careful budgeting and prudence, Barbara envies Sheba's wealth and the apparent carefree lifestyle it has given her. For all her envy, Barbara is the perpetual snob, looking down on her colleagues and the students she teachers. She feels she is socially, intellectually and morally superior. Class is important in Sheba's relationship with Steven. With little experience of "working class" people, Sheba believes she has found a diamond in the rough. A sensitive, artistic boy she can mould and encourage. It adds to her general sympathy for him and the delusion she has surrounding their relationship.

While the balance of power teeters between Barbara and Sheba throughout the novel, by its conclusion it is solely Barbara in the driving seat. The clues to their personalities which lead to the conclusion are in their surname. Sheba is a Hart, a sensitive woman who thinks with her heart and sees the good in people to her own detriment. Barbara is a Covett, a woman who desires something intensely. This something is kinship, human love and affection. But the exact motiviation for this desire - purely friendship or sexual - is never entirely clear. A sexual motive is hinted at in her jealousy of Richard and Steven and her attempt to stroke Sheba's arm to comfort her, like she did with the girls at school.

A dark, witty and wonderfully observed novel, Notes on a Scandal is a perfectly conceived psychological thriller that shows your enemies may be much closer than you could ever imagine.

My next read: My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult.