Product Description

Shortlisted for The Booker Prize

Schoolteacher Barbara Covett has known none but the most solitary of lifestyles until Sheba Hart joins St. George's. Starting by sharing lunches, then family events, the new art teacher draws Barbara into a touching confidence. Unbeknownst to their colleagues, however, another
relationship blossoms meanwhile: Sheba has begun a passionate affair with an underage male student. When the details come to light and Sheba falls prey to the inevitable media circus, Barbara decides to write an account in her friend’s defense--revealing not only Sheba's secrets but her own.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #55916 in Books
• Published on: 2003-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 258 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780312421991
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

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 The New Yorker
Barbara Covett, a sixtyish history teacher, is the kind of unmarried-woman-with-cat whose female friends sooner or later decide she is "too intense." Thus when a beautiful new pottery teacher, Sheba Hart—a "wispy novice with a tinkly accent and see-through skirts"—chooses Barbara as a confidante, she is deeply, even rather sinisterly, gratified. Sheba's secret is explosive: married with two kids, she is having an affair with a fifteen-year-old student. The novel, Heller's second, is Barbara's supposedly objective "history" of the affair and its eventual discovery, written furtively while she and her friend are holed up in a borrowed house, waiting for Sheba's court date. Barbara has appointed herself Sheba's "unofficial guardian," protecting her from the salivating tabloids. Equally adroit at satire and at psychological suspense, Heller charts the course of a predatory friendship and demonstrates the lengths to which some people go for human company.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

From Booklist
Heller's insightful, piercing second novel (her first was Everything You Know [2000]) is narrated by Barbara Covett, a lonely older woman who purports to tell the story of her friend's downfall. When Sheba Hart arrives to be the new art teacher at the school where Barbara teaches history, solitary Barbara is immediately taken with her. Though her initial attempt to befriend Sheba is thwarted when Sheba becomes friends with another teacher, eventually Sheba begins to converse with Barbara. Soon, she invites Barbara over to her house to have meals with her family. Barbara is shocked to learn that Sheba is being pursued by a 15-year-old student and scandalized to find that Sheba has given in to his romantic overtures. But for solitary Barbara, her friend's scandalous life^B is a window to a more exciting one, and vicariously she laps up the bits and pieces Sheba shares, imagining or surmising the rest. The novel builds to a stunning ending that ultimately reveals Barbara's true character as much as it shows the depths to which Sheba has fallen. Both a penetrating character study and a sharp examination of voyeurism, Heller's novel is utterly brilliant. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

One of my favorite books this year
This book is highly recommended.
In a nutshell, Barbara Covett, is a 60ish spinster school teacher... opinionated, intelligent, and very lonely. She becomes good friends with Sheba Hart, a beautiful, popular, 42 year old new teacher who had just arrived at Barbara's school. Sheba has a scandalous affair with one of her young students, and the story is told from Barbara's point of view as the narrator.
When I heard about the plot of this book, I have to admit I wasn't all that interested in reading it. But I picked up the book and read the first page and found it utterly compelling and an engrossing and intelligent read.
Part of the brilliance of this novel is the way you learn about both characters by listening to the narrator, the aptly named Barbara Covett. All is not what it seems, and the author does a wonderful job making these characters very real people.
Heller does a wonderful job showing how single women relate to those married with children, and how people deal with loneliness and routine. She also shows how we make rationalizations about ourselves and our actions in order to justify our beliefs that we are good, honorable people.
I highly recommend this novel for any book clubs. It would make for a great discussion, and I think that everyone is going to have a different opinion about each of these two women. Not only is this novel an intelligent read, but it's a fun one also. This book is a page-turner that leaves you thinking about it, and wanting to talk about it with your friends..what more can you ask for?

An intriguing little novel
One goes into Zoe Heller's "What Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal," a novel with a blowout of a premise, with some heavy expectations. What you get is a slightly unexpected but nonetheless worthwhile and intriguing reading experience, even if you can't help but wish there had been just a little of the melodrama you had anticipated. Heller's narrative, centered on the scandal surrounding forty-one-year-old Sheba Hart -- who has been caught having a sexual relationship with a sixteen-year-old student at the school where she teaches pottery classes, is remarkably staid and free of soap opera theatrics (even though she does imbue her tale with a dose of humor for levity). Heller focuses less on the aftermath of Sheba getting caught than she does on the year and a half preceding the uproar -- the time period in which Sheba first caught the student's eye, slowly got drawn into the affair, and began to lose control to an obsession over her young lover. Heller is struggling to answer the question that she has posed in the title: what was this otherwise right-thinking woman doing getting involved with a student? She does a passable job hinting at how it happens, but never really overcomes the vagaries of her characters. In the end you have theories but no concrete rulings on the how and why of it. I personally appreciate some of the room left for conjecture, but I can see how others would be left frustrated and put off by the vagueness of it all. At any rate, it is quite interesting to follow Sheba's collision course for disaster. The novel also has an unexpected sub-plot involving Barbara Covett, the spinsterly narrator of the story who is harboring an obsession of her own -- on her friendship with Sheba. Because Barbara is busy narrating Sheba's story -- and remains thoroughly unaware of how odd her obsession is or of just how deep it seems to run -- you are only afforded glimpses of how or why she behaves the way that she does. Barbara is only seen through the prism of her relationship with Sheba, with only hints at her formative years with a poor family and an aggressively religious sister. This would make a great choice for a book club, because I am sure that every reader could take away a slightly different interpretation of this novel that would make for great discussions (or, potentially, arguments). A film adaptation is coming later this year, and I can't wait to see how Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench flesh out their characters, but I think that I will miss the way the novel allows you to come to your own conclusions.

Dark tale of love, friendship and obsession
Craving something different, I picked up Zoe Heller's What Was She Thinking? with utmost anticipation. The synopsis had promised a dark, lurid tale of love, friendship and obsession. This is one of the most gripping novels I've read in quite some time.

Barbara Covett, a sixty-year-old schoolteacher and notorious spinster, has lived a rather monotonous existence. That is until she meets Sheba Hart. Sheba's slight eccentricities intrigue Barbara. A friendship ensues, but things take a disarming turn when Sheba confesses to having an affair with one of her fifteen-year-old students. A forty-two-year-old married woman, Sheba has a lot to lose if word gets out about the affair. Barbara becomes her confidante, but her intentions are rather sinister...

As mentioned earlier, What Was She Thinking? is an engrossing and gripping tale of love, friendship and obsession. The novel's structure and storytelling is rather different from the books I've read recently - and that's a good thing. I couldn't put this down. The darkness of the novel enthralled me from the first paragraph. Zoe Heller is a talented English author who has made her mark in contemporary literature. Her style is rather similar to Margot Livesey's, one of my favorite authors. Highly recommended...