Paul Bryant's Reviews > Notes on a Scandal

Bells in many readers’ heads will be clanging repeatedly as they devour this frankly vicious novel. The frumpy 62 year old spinster Barbara Covett, a teacher, who gloms onto svelte hippyish upper-class 41 year old Sheba Hart (ages are most relevant as will be seen) the moment she bicycles into the school playground to take up pottery teaching puts out a very strong TOM RIPLEY vibe as she strives mightily to become Sheba’s BFF and to ooze into Sheba’s very bloodstream, like psycho Tom does to Dickie Greenleaf. My money says that Zoe Heller’s bookshelf contained a well-thumbed copy of The Talented Mr Ripley.

In turn borderline personality Barbara bequeaths a good chunk of her curious manner of expression to ELEANOR OLIPHANT :

Later she discovered that she and Connolly had unknowingly set up camp in the area of the heath frequented by homosexuals. The man who disturbed them had not been a Peeping Tom but a queer Lothario in search of a conquest.

and

It became clear - again too late - that he had been going for a kiss on both cheeks. The immediate introduction of physical intimacy was a horrid misjudgement on his part, I felt. He had never so much as shaken my hand before.


This is pure Eleanor! My money says that Gail Honeyman’s bookshelf contained a well-thumbed copy of Notes on a Scandal.

But the exaggerated comical locutions fade into horror as the tale unfolds and the depths of Barbara’s loneliness, neediness and self-loathing are revealed. Tom Ripley may be Barbara’s unacknowledged father but Barbara is Eleanor’s stark raving mad aunt. Don’t invite her for Christmas!

And regarding the salacious plot, we may recall CELESTE PRICE from Alissa Nutting’s recent outrageous novel Tampa, immediately renamed Boylita by waggish reviewers. This is because Sheba Hart, 41, as we have noted, is having an intensely sexual relationship with her 15 (later 16)-year old pupil Steven Connolly. My money says that Alissa Nutting’s bookshelf also contained a well-thumbed copy of Notes on a Scandal. (Along with Lolita and The Kama Sutra).

And there’s also a faint trace of ANNIE WILKES about our Barbara. You remember fate delivers author Paul Sheldon into Annie’s sturdy hands in Stephen King’s Misery & when he seems like he’s getting better and going to leave her she gives him a few whacks to keep him in his place - she loves him so much, you see. And Barbara, in her closeted Ripleyesque way, loves Sheba; so much that she also clobbers her to stop her leaving. But in a non-violent way. Equally unpleasant though.

(Some geekish readers will also recall the fate of the guy in Evelyn Waugh’s novel A Handful of Dust from 1934 – the basic idea is exactly the same as in Misery. My money says that Stephen King’s bookshelf contained a well-thumbed copy of A Handful of Dust. Did Zoe Heller’s bookshelf contain a copy of Misery ? Let’s not get too carried away – that way madness lies.)

And modern readers may well remark to their spouses or colleagues or pets that the scandalous relationship detailed herein is a ringer for that between the 15 year-old future President of France EMMANUEL MACRON and his then 39 year old teacher Brigitte Trogneux. But since that all happened in 1992-ish and Zoe Heller’s novel was published in 2003 I can’t see any direct connection there. And anyhow, it’s lovely to see that in M Macron’s case it all worked out splendidly. For the characters in Notes on a Scandal, not so much.