Product Description

Schoolteacher Barbara Covett leads a lonely, solitary life, until new teacher Sheba Hart draws her into her confidence and they become friends. But Barbara is unprepared for the secret she will learn: that Sheba has begun a passionate affair with an underage male student, a situation that soon creates a media circus.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1982999 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-15
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .69" h x 5.30" w x 5.72" l, .38 pounds
• Binding: Audio CD

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

From Publishers Weekly
Heller's 2003 novel earned tremendous acclaim, including a spot on the shortlist for the prestigious Man Booker Prize. The audio release coincides with the 2007 film adaptation, Notes on a Scandal, starring Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench. Sheba Hart-a beautiful and charming bohemian high school art teacher in her early 40s-places her family, career and social status in grave jeopardy through a sexual relationship with 15-year-old Steven Connolly. Sheba's dowdy colleague and confidant Barbara Covett recounts the story from a deliciously twisted perspective steeped in obsession and jealousy. Veteran narrator Nadia May brings nuance to Barbara's voice. The layered structure of the tale itself-a lonely spinster relating the details of a steamy intergenerational love affair secondhand-presents a challenge for the audio format, but one that May meets with finesse. Listeners wanting to cut to the chase and escape into a garden-variety sexual thriller may grow impatient, but those with an appreciation for character-driven drama will not be disappointed. Simultaneous release with the Picador paperback (Reviews, May 26, 2003).
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From AudioFile
Barbara Covett, lonely sixtyish London schoolteacher, becomes enthralled with Sheba, a younger fellow teacher. Sheba, married and a mother, has an affair with a 15-year-old o student. How Barbara handles this is the meat of this neatly written story. Nadia May IS Barbara--self-deluding, jealous, controlling, snide though always civil. May gives voice to subordinate characters as well. The faithless teenager, Sheba's bratty daughter, Sheba herself (increasingly desperate as the boy loses interest), the pompous headmaster all come to life to add to what is a sad and riveting story. Dame Judi Dench plays Barbara in the movie (NOTES ON A SCANDAL); it's difficult to imagine she does it any better than this audio portrayal. J.B.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine