Review

Notes on a Scandal

By Zoë Heller

Published by Penguin

Zoë Heller's second novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2003.

It is an account of a relationship between Sheba, a pottery teacher at a north London school, and Connolly, one of her students, but what lifts the book above its tawdry and not unfamiliar storyline is the voice of the narrator, Barbara, who unwittingly reveals to the reader more about herself than about the lovers.

She is a bitter, lonely and slightly creepy person whose fixed views do her no credit; in spite of this, however, she is not an entirely unsympathetic character, and this enhances her credibility.

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