The final book I finished last week was 'Notes on a Scandal' by Zoe Heller. I really enjoyed the film version of this story and hoped that the source material would be just as good, if not better.
 |
| 'Notes on a Scandal' by Zoe Heller (Viking/Penguin Group, 2003) |
The more I think about this book, the more my head hurts. Barbara acts a bit like both a filter and a funnel - she's clearly an unreliable narrator only reporting things to suit her life view, but she also gradually picks off the extended network of characters we meet at the beginning of the book until it's just her and Sheba against the world. As such, the reader can't take things at face value and has to get as much as possible from characters when they appear as they may never be seen again! Consequently, I feel like I don't know what to think and as though I could easily have missed something very significant without even realising it.
I also think the book could have done with some notes of its own as an introduction. 'Notes on a Scandal' seems to pick up on the particular Zeitgeist of 2003, when it was published. That was the year of the Soham murders trial and new UK legislation to do with sexual offences, so child safeguarding was quite a hot topic in the media at the time. I had to look this up afterwards and knowing that before I started reading would have added a whole new layer to the book. The scandal is assumed to be Sheba's affair, but is the book also a lesson about looking for danger away from the obvious? For all her faults, Sheba didn't intend to harm Connolly and he is portrayed as the more active instigator of the relationship. Sheba could have just as easily become obsessed with a colleague or someone she bumped into down the shops, so why couldn't the vastly more predatory Barbara also be a threat to pupils as well as colleagues?
Comparing the book and the film, I think I've let myself down a bit by watching one before reading the other. The film creates a creeping sense of doom because it has a chronological narrative structure which follows the timeline of events. The book, however, starts at the end, which makes it much harder to create any sort of suspense, especially if like me you know roughly what happens. I think the film also improves on the book in other ways, but I don't want to go into to much detail for fear of spoilers. I preferred the ending of the book, but think the film just captures the sense of menace much better. After all, it's Barbara's job as the book's narrator to make everything seem nice and normal.
On the whole, I think that this book was a lot more subtle than I expected. Pretty much as soon as I'd finished it I decided that I'd need to read it again at least once to see if I could 'get it' a second time around. I'm assuming it's just me being lazy though - it could as easily be that that not being in the 2003 Zeitgeist means there's implicit references that I will never get. I don't think I'll know until I try reading it again.
The book feels so subtle and manipulative that it's a credit to its author, but it's like a pale imitation which hints at the anger, passion and complexity portrayed so well in the film. It's thought to be unusual, but perhaps this is an instance where the film actually is better than the book. I can think of other examples - 'Fight Club' by Chuck Palahniuk springs to mind - but maybe these are the exceptions which prove the rule.
So, if you haven't read it, give it a go, then watch the film. If you have watched the film, you might want to read it, but you might be better off with something else. On the theme of obsession, I'd recommend the first three Ripley novels of Patricia Highsmith.
Now, time to choose something else from the shelves!
