NYLONbooks

Notes on a Scandal, May 2009, 7/10.

Written by Zoë Heller. Published by Penguin Books.

The novel’s title and basic plot – the love/sex affair between an attractive 40 years old teacher, Sheba, and her 15 years old student – might induce you to think the book will be all about Nabokovian pleasures and frenzies. However, the self-appointed chronicler is not Sheba, but an older colleague of her, a bleakly lonely spinster, whose friendship with Sheba blurs into obsession and of whose truthfulness we become more and more doubtful as we read along. It’s her deranged but lucid personality that keeps on surfacing throughout the book. This novel is really about the complex and disturbing relationship among the two women, and its transformation into mutual, and partly coerced, dependency. It’s a gripping read, very anguishing.