Notes on a Scandal

Zoe Heller’s novel Notes on a Scandal was published in 2003, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize that year. Heller’s narrative, which seems to focus on a middle-aged teacher’s scandalous affair with one of her high school students, actually turns out to be about another relationship altogether. As readers learn more and more about the narrator – another teacher who is seemingly only tangentially involved with the events – we realize that the novel is actually about a stalker-like obsession.

Our narrator is Barbara Covett, a history teacher in her 60s who is unmarried, has no kids, and no close friends. A wry, cynical, and appealing commentator on what she observes, Barbara is very class-conscious, hyper-attentive to detail, and clearly profoundly and depressingly lonely.

St. George’s Comprehensive School, the decrepit high school in London where Barbara teaches, hires 41-year-old Sheba Hart as an art and pottery teacher. Sheba is glamorous by St. George’s standards, and all the teen boys develop crushes on her. She is flattered by the attention, and ends up falling in love with one of them, the 15-year-old Steven Connolly, whose artistic talent makes him stand out in her class. Steven comes from a disadvantaged background, lives in the London projects, and has a working-class taxi driver dad.



Of course, all of this information – as well as everything that follows – we have to take with a grain of salt, because we are getting it third-hand, according to Barbara. In fact, the novel we are reading is Barbara’s chronicle of Sheba’s inappropriate sexual adventures with Steven. Barbara’s narrative explains that at first she didn’t know about the affair, but is filling in the details retroactively, including gold stars to mark important details and charting a timeline of precisely what happened when on graph paper.

Sheba and Steven start having sex in risky, potentially discoverable places: in school and in the middle of Hampstead Heath, a London park. But still, at first, no one knows about their relationship.

Sheba invites Barbara for a weekend lunch, and Barbara decides that Sheba has the perfect life after she meets Sheba’s husband, her 17-year-old daughter Polly, and her younger son who has Down syndrome. Sheba seems to confess to Barbara, but her version of the story holds many things back. Sheba does tell Barbara that she is unfulfilled in her life: her daughter Polly is rebellious and difficult, her relationship with her much older husband began when he was her college professor and now Sheba feels like his daughter rather than wife. Sheba also adds that Steven once tried to kiss her before she gently rebuked him.



Barbara invests the lunch with deep meaning and decides that she and Sheba will become close friends. This is alarming, since Barbara reveals that her one other close friendship ended in that woman threatening Barbara with a restraining order if she didn’t leave her alone and stop trying to dominate her.

On Guy Fawkes Night, an annual bonfire-filled holiday celebrating the uncovering of the Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament in 1605, Barbara sees Sheba and Steven sneaking off to have sex and figures out what’s been going on. Barbara is completely thrown. She feels that Sheba has betrayed her friendship by not telling her the truth about Steven. Sometime later, after Barbara’s cat is diagnosed with cancer, she wants Sheba’s moral support to cope. When Sheba blows her off to spend time with Steven, Barbara grows even more furious.

Now, any time Barbara tries to describe the relationship between Steven and Sheba, her narration is doubled. First, we get Sheba’s own heartfelt and increasingly sentimental and desperate declarations of her love for the teenager – and then we get Barbara’s own mixture of disgust and shock.



Slowly, it becomes clear that Sheba is much more invested in Steven than he is in her. The more he pulls away, the more Sheba’s obsession starts to grow. Soon, she is writing him love letters and trying to sneak into his house. Meanwhile, he mocks and insults her.

Barbara has lunch with Brian Bangs, the math teacher. At first, Barbara is excited – a new friend! Maybe he likes her! But then it turns out that Brian is only trying to cultivate Barbara as a way of getting to Sheba, whom he finds very attractive. Furious and jealous, Barbara pointedly hints at Sheba’s inappropriate closeness to “one of the Year Eleven boys” and mocks Brian’s crush by saying Sheba prefers much younger men.

Polly is expelled from boarding school for misbehavior. When Sheba confronts her, Polly accuses her mother of having an affair, and their relationship disintegrates even further. Sheba’s only source of potential comfort is Steven, whom she calls constantly throughout the day. He ignores her calls, and when she shows up at his house, she sees him with a girl his own age – but even this indignity doesn’t break his hold over her.



Meanwhile, the headmaster of St. George’s finds out about Sheba’s relationship with Steven – probably because of Brian, the math teacher. She is charged with sexual assault, suspended from school, kicked out of the house by her husband, disowned by her daughter, and then pilloried in the press.

In the resulting media circus, Barbara decides to write a defense of Sheba – which turns into the novel we are reading now. While Sheba’s life falls apart, Barbara is in pure heaven. Now she can finally be Sheba’s only friend and prove herself. She retires early, gives up her small apartment, and comes to live with Sheba in order to take care of her. Although Sheba is at first angry that Barbara has been writing this account of Sheba’s life, especially since Barbara has added a bunch of things that she could never have personally witnessed or known anything about, her desperation eventually forces her to make up with Barbara.

The novel ends with Barbara completely mothering a newly mentally unstable Sheba, who can’t go anywhere because she is now a famous “celebrity deviant.” Sheba sleeps in a little girl’s bed, eats baby food for comfort, and has acquiesced to Barbara’s domination.