When Heller’s newest work, The Believers, came out this spring, I realized that I had never read her best known novel, Notes on a Scandal: What Was She Thinking?: A Novel.  It was one of those that I missed until after the film came out.  By then, I just wasn’t that interested.  I decided to do a Heller splurge and got both books.  The Believers didn’t hold my attention, but I am quite happy that I finally read Notes on a Scandal.  Since school’s about to let out, this is a perfect novel to enjoy as you say good-bye to the academic year.

The novel is narrated by Barbara, an older teacher at St. George’s.  She befriends Sheba, the new art teacher.  Sheba’s crisis, an affair with a fifteen-year old student, provides the narrative structure of the work.  I think the reason I passed when the novel first made its splash was the whole “teacher/student” plot line. Having to spend serious amounts of time with teenage boys in the classroom, I personally have no desire to go there.  However, I quickly realized that the title is not necessarily a reference to Sheba’s affair as much as it is an invitation for the reader to wonder what on earth Barbara is thinking.

Heller does what I love best in fiction.  She begins with a rather unpleasant, unremarkable woman and then draws us into this woman’s mind.  I was simultaneously enthralled and repulsed by Barbara’s honesty and utter self-deception.  At times, I have lived alone and could completely relate to the minutia of Barbara’s life: buying a single gallon of milk and a loaf of bread, for example, or stretching simple tasks into half-day events just to fill the hours.  One of Barbara’s explanations of single life stuck with me for days:

When you live alone, your furnishings, your possessions, are always confronting you with the thinness of your existence.  You know with painful accuracy the provenance of everything you touched and the last time you touched it.  The five little cushions on your sofa stay plumped and leaning at their jaunty angle for months at a time unless you theatrically muss them.  The level of the salt in your shaker decreases at the same excruciating rate, day after day.

Clearly, Barbara is not a woman who wants to live alone.  For me, the fun of the novel came from sorting out Barbara’s version of events from the facts.  While I found the ending a little unsatisfactory, Barbara’s attraction to Sheba certainly became the centerpiece of the work, rather than the teacher/student relationship.  In many ways, I felt that Heller’s portrayal of Barbara and Sheba’s relationship was much more satisfying.  I haven’t seen the film, but I want to now, just to see how it compares.