- Gebundene Ausgabe: 258 Seiten
- Verlag: Henry Holt & Company (August 2003)
- Sprache: Englisch
- ISBN-10: 0805073337
- ISBN-13: 978-0805073331
- Größe und/oder Gewicht: 21,3 x 14,2 x 2,8 cm
- Durchschnittliche Kundenbewertung: 5.0 von 5 Sternen Alle Rezensionen anzeigen (2 Kundenrezensionen)
- Amazon Bestseller-Rang: Nr. 651.171 in Englische Bücher (Siehe Top 100 in Englische Bücher)
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Notes on a Scandal
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Produktbeschreibungen
Amazon.co.uk
Zoe Heller juggles journalism and novel-writing successfully in Notes on a Scandal and manages to say something interesting and complex about moral panics and the people who get caught up in them.
Pottery teacher Sheba lets herself be talked into an affair with 15-year-old pupil Connolly; part of what is admirable about this novel is that there is no real attempt to extenuate this--it's wrong and she knows this from the start, enough to lie to herself and others about it. It's an abuse of her very limited power--he is one of the few of her pupils interested in art, not interested in perpetually disrupting her lessons.
Sheba is not alone in abusing power, though, and Heller forces us to confront this unpleasant truth about the moralising, managerial headmaster, the husband freed by Sheba's action to seduce his own very slightly older students, and the relatives who never liked her much and can now disown her. Above all, she devotes most of the novel to Barbara, the older colleague who becomes Sheba's confidante and slowly manipulates the situation to make Sheba entirely dependent on her. This is a brilliantly gloomy study in obsession--and the obsession in question is not actually Sheba's with her underage lover. --Roz Kaveney -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .
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
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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6 von 6 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
Format:Taschenbuch|Von Amazon bestätigter Kauf
das Buch (seit kurzem verfilmt) schildert das Schicksal zweier Frauen, deren Lebenslinien durch eine ganz besondere Situation aneinandergeknotet sind. Die Grenze zwischen Täter und Opfer ist in den vielfältigen ungewöhnlichen Beziehungen der Personen im Buch nicht immer sicher und gerade zu sehen. Wer ist hilflos, wer wird verführt, wer trägt wieviel Verantwortung, wie und warum konnte es soweit kommen - Fragen dieser Art werden aufgeworfen und können und sollten kontrovers diskutiert werden.
Schnell zu lesen, sprachlich klar und wunderschön, aber inhaltlich keine leichte Lektüre.
Eigentlich ein ganz kurzer Roman, zu lesen während einer Zugfahrt quer durch die Republik, und doch psychologisch tiefschürfend, lang und anhaltend nachwirkend. So sind Menschen.
Sehr zu empfehlen.
Schnell zu lesen, sprachlich klar und wunderschön, aber inhaltlich keine leichte Lektüre.
Eigentlich ein ganz kurzer Roman, zu lesen während einer Zugfahrt quer durch die Republik, und doch psychologisch tiefschürfend, lang und anhaltend nachwirkend. So sind Menschen.
Sehr zu empfehlen.
6 von 10 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
Format:Taschenbuch
A fascinating novel with elaborate character portayals, written from a quite unusual perspective, which makes you feel like not being able to put it aside before you have finished.
Just read it - and like it.
Just read it - and like it.
Die hilfreichsten Kundenrezensionen auf Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
109 Rezensionen
50 von 52 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
One of my favorite books this year
3. September 2003
Format:Gebundene Ausgabe|Von Amazon bestätigter Kauf
Brief summary and review, no spoilers.
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 has just arrived at Barbara's school. The novel is told from the point-of-view of Barbara, as she befriends Sheba and discovers that Sheba may be having an affair with one of Sheba's young students.
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?
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 has just arrived at Barbara's school. The novel is told from the point-of-view of Barbara, as she befriends Sheba and discovers that Sheba may be having an affair with one of Sheba's young students.
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?
23 von 24 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
Notes on a Scandal
4. Mai 2005
Format:Taschenbuch
This was one of the best books I've ever read -- and I read a lot. It was astonishingly good. It's about 2 teachers at a Brtish public high school who develop a close friendship. One of them, however, has a history of obsessive behaviour with other friends she's had, and is really quite bizarre in her thoughts and behaviour. What makes this book so fascinating is it is this "weird" (for want of a better word) character (Barbara) who narrates the book; therefore, she thinks SHE is in control of the story, and the story as far as she's concerned is about the other main character's affair with one of the students at the school. But for the READER, the real story is Barbara herself. As the story progresses, she becomes increasingly more sinister, and it becomes impossible to put this book down. I don't want to write anymore and spoil any of what's in store for other readers. This book is simply not to be missed.
15 von 15 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
An intriguing little novel
24. September 2006
Format:Taschenbuch
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.
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