Notes on a scandal novel

Bestselling Series

This is one of those disquieting novels that proffers its apparent theme then cunningly reveals itself to be about something else altogether. As its title and first pages suggest, its surface plot concerns a tabloid-pleasing sizzler of a scandal. Sheba Hart, a year-old pottery teacher, arrives at a dreggy north London comp trailing the kind of tarnished glamour that sets the school's sex-starved males mildly abuzz. The suitor who presses his case first is year-old Steven Connolly, a reasonably gormless lad with mild artistic proclivities, a cabbie father, and a home on an estate. Within months of her arrival, Sheba, a mother of two and the apparently contented wife of a lecturer 20 years her senior, is copulating with the grammatically challenged adolescent on the art-room floor.

Share on:. Barbara has been teaching at St George's for several years, and in spite of her caustic words on the institution, it is very much the focus of her lonely life. When newcomer, Sheba joins them, she forms a strong bond with her, and becomes part of Sheba's life. Sheba is married with two children, but her attraction to a pupil, Connolly, leads her to risk everything in a liaison of which Barbara is extremely jealous. As a result, their apparent friendship travels a sinister path. Brilliantly evoking the sights, sounds and smells of a run down secondary school, Heller provides a gripping portrayal of the problems faced by teachers both in and out of the classroom. The children, the staff and the general claustrophobia of the situation are described unflinchingly: If you were to plot a graph of a teacher's spirits throughout the school day, afternoon break would be represented by the lowest valley.