Published 2003 / Length 256 pages
Lonely history teacher Barbara Covett has few friends and no confidantes when beautiful Bathsheba Hart breezes into her life. Seizing the opportunity for companionship, Barbara sets about making herself indispensable to the naive Sheba in order to fill ‘the white wastelands’ of her ‘appointmentless weeks’. Heller’s second novel is filtered through the eyes of spinster Barbara, who takes an almost voyeuristic delight in recording the minutiae of her daily encounters in her journals. It quickly emerges that she is neither a reliable nor dispassionate narrator, and when pottery teacher Sheba engages in an illicit affair, it is gradually revealed just how well practised Barbara is in the art of manipulation. With delightful cameos from maths teacher Brian Bangs and enthusiastic headmaster Sandy Pabblem, this is a witty, dark and poignant account of two women searching for fulfilment. Most interesting is the way in which the pivotal ‘scandal’ is not sensationalized, nor are we required to pass judgement; instead, one taboo gives way to another, leading to a fascinating foray into the power of obsession.
‘Heller is a fine writer, fashioning her material with supreme confidence: the novel is funny, bleak, superbly structured, and full of the satisfyingly tight phrases that distinguish her journalism, but the fundamental point is somehow elusive.’ – The Guardian
• Max Davidson commented in his review: ‘Not many newspaper columnists adapt to the more strenuous demands of writing novels. Heller is the exception who proves the rule.’ Do you think her transition from journalist to novelist is successful? Is it easy to detect that she is a journalist in the way she writes?
• Consider the book’s title. In what way is its simplicity either apt or ill-fitting given the narrator’s character? Is the ‘scandal’ to which it refers simply Sheba’s affair?
• Has Heller produced characters worthy of our sympathy as well as our contempt? Is there any vulnerability in Barbara that endears her to the reader?
• The novel was shortlisted for the 2003 Booker Prize.
• It was released as a feature film in 2006, directed by Richard Eyre and starring Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench.
• The book was selected for the first Richard & Judy Book Club reading list in 2004.
• Drowning Ruth by CHRISTINA SCHWARZ (see here) – a comparable controlling central character.
• The Aspern Papers by HENRY JAMES – the narrator’s need for fulfilment leads to an uncontrollable obsession.
• Love Lessons by JACQUELINE WILSON – a fifteen-year-old’s perspective on a pupil–teacher relationship.