Notes on a Scandal
Zoe Heller's 2003 Booker-shortlisted novel is presented as the private journal of Barbara Covett, a sixty-something history teacher at a struggling London comprehensive school, who has decided to set down the true story of her younger colleague Sheba Hart and the scandal that has ruined Sheba's life. Sheba, a forty-one-year-old pottery teacher with a kind older husband and two children, has been arrested for a sexual relationship with a fifteen-year-old male student, and Barbara has somehow become her sole confidante and defender. As Barbara's record of events unfolds, in tight, witty, faintly malicious prose, it becomes clear that the real story is not really about Sheba at all but about Barbara's own loneliness and the hold she has been quietly building on the younger woman. The 2006 film adaptation, with Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett, made the novel's portrait of obsessive friendship internationally famous.
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about Notes on a Scandal
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Aging history teacher Barbara Covett befriends Sheba, a new art teacher at her London school. When Sheba begins an affair with a fifteen-year-old student, Barbara becomes her confidante and her secret diarist.
Yes. A 2006 film adaptation directed by Richard Eyre and starring Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench was released. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards including Best Adapted Screenplay.
Notes on a Scandal is literary thriller and psychological character study, with mounting menace from an unreliable older narrator. It is more interior and observational than typical thrillers.
Notes on a Scandal was written by Zoe Heller, published in 2003 by Penguin Audiobooks.
Notes on a Scandal is 256 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Notes on a Scandal takes most readers 4 to 6 hours to finish.
Notes on a Scandal is a standalone novel by Zoe Heller, not part of a series.
Notes on a Scandal is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.