From AwardAnnals
| Book: | What Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal: A Novel |
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| Author: | Zoë Heller |
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| Publisher: | Picador |
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Schoolteacher Barbara Covett has known none but the most solitary of lifestyles until Sheba Hart joins St. George’s. Starting by sharing lunches, then family events, the new art teacher draws Barbara into a touching confidence. Unbeknownst to their colleagues, however, another relationship blossoms meanwhile: Sheba has begun a passionate affair with an underage male student. When the details come to light and Sheba falls prey to the inevitable media circus, Barbara decides to write an account in her friend’s defense—revealing not only Sheba’s secrets but her own.
Related works
Notes on a Scandal
Richard Eyre
Academy Award® winners Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett give wickedly entertaining, Oscar-nominated performances—one as a woman consumed by her colleague’s guilty secret, the other, a victim to her own dark obsessions—in this sexy, stylish thriller. Dench mesmerizes as Barbara Covett, a teacher who rules over her classroom with an iron fist, yet leads a desperate, solitary life outside it. That is, until she meets radiant new art teacher Sheba Hart (Blanchett). Although at first overjoyed with her newfound kindred spirit, when Barbara discovers that Sheba is having an affair with a teenage student, her jealously and rage spiral out of control.
