2023 EDIT: Part of my 2023 clear-up, of books I no longer like, or am no longer interested in, or remember well as standing out, or find as special anymore, or I otherwise will not miss.
Final Score: 3/5
Original Review:
One word: Addictive. If I didn't have other things going on when I was reading this, I would have finished it in one day.
'Notes on a Scandal' reminded me of how and why school children are monstrous, and that people are not all that they seem at first, or are subject to change over time - such as from school days to adulthood.
By-the-by, Sheba is my cat's name, yet I always took her character in this book seriously. She is as solid and complex - and pitiable - as the other characters. Barbara is a particularly devious creation...
Realistic, dark, compelling and, well, scandalous. Not all is what it seems in this story. I soon grasped that, although the "scandal" is on the schoolteacher Sheba and her affair with the fifteen-year-old student Connolly, it is fundamentally about the narrator and her own unreliable psychosis. Barbara Covett is just one of the many characters in 'Notes on a Scandal' whose loneliness causes them to lose control and therefore manipulate others just for companionship. Passion and control/oppression over others is the main theme of this wonderfully original book. Of course, we humans are all selfish and want dominance in any kind of relationship, don't we?
Barbara is a schoolteacher in her early sixties. She is alone except for the company of her cat Portia. She never married or had children. She thinks she is above everyone else (even the people she doesn't know well or at all) and writes her thoughts honestly (or so the reader thinks at first). She is a snob, and doesn't even realise her own flaws and hypocrisies. Her life becomes revolved around the new free-thinking teacher Mrs Sheba Hart, whom she sees as a kindred spirit. When Sheba's affair with a pupil is uncovered, she relies on Barbara for help and support, unaware of Barbara's own secrets and intentions...
It is a great story, written to-the-point and with relish. The characters are fabulously imperfect, and are continuously and negatively judged by Barbara (except for Sheba, during the course of the story and of her downfall).
Barbara's observations on the media and on life are also worth taking into account. Author Zoe Heller is very clever. On a couple of pages she remarks how, if an older man is charged for sexually advancing on a young girl, he is demonized; hated by the caring public. But if an older woman is charged for the same thing with a young boy, while she will suffer consequences and imprisonment, her crimes will be treated as a joke by the public. The woman herself will be ridiculed, called things like a "cougar", a "cradle-snatcher" and a "poor, sexually-repressed old cow" to name a few. Naturally, Connolly's side of the story in relation to Sheba is hardly brought up by the media, unless it's to make Sheba look even more pathetic. This wouldn't have been the case if the victim was female, whose actions are, sadly, always harshly criticized. I think I recall watching an episode of 'South Park' that looks into this double standard.
'Notes on a Scandal' misses a star because the ending is abrupt, on the last page, and left me thinking "That's it?" There isn't a real conclusion to the story, although maybe it is more chilling that way. And some readers may have to give Barbara's somewhat irritating narrative and commentary the benefit of the doubt, and know that something does come of it. The author is completely aware of what is going on in each of her character's minds, not just in the protagonist Barb's.
So for want of something else to say that hasn't already been said by other reviewers, I'll end this review of 'Notes on a Scandal' by reiterating: read this book. It seems like a simple story about love in its many forms and depravities (think: madness), but underneath the surface there is something in it that will perhaps shock and marvel you (it is more about the madness than you had originally thought).
EDIT: I have at last seen the film version, and it is very good. A lot of characters and arcs had to be left out in its eighty-seven minute running time, and the medial social commentary is downplayed, but otherwise it follows the book to a terrific T. Dame Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett are brilliant.
Final Score: 4/5
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