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The Believers

by: Zoë Heller

September 25, 2008
I loved Zoe Heller's last books but this one is packed with the most unsympathetic bunch of characters I've ever come across in one book. I didn't care about any of them, and the matriarch who dominates the book is so relentlessly unpleasant that I was absolutely indifferent to her fate. Her appalling selfish cruelty towards all her children was implausible and unquestioned by any of her family or friends. Her children were all equally unattractive and, despite their grim family background, I felt no sympathy for their fates.
None of them seemed to learn anything about themselves and none of them seemed truly affected by the death of their father. There were no moving or telling encounters between mother and children, just a lot of vicious ... Read More:

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Everything You Know

by: Zoë Heller

July 28, 2005
This is a woeful piece of writing well below the standard I would expect from Zoe Heller. Every single character - without exception - is so utterly unsympathetic that it is impossible to conjure up any compassion for them. My perception is that Zeller tried everything she could to alieanate her reader and fill them with disgust and contempt: in this, for me at least, she succeeded. What an utterly pointless piece of writing!

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Notes on a Scandal

by: Zoë Heller

March 04, 2004
In Notes On A Scandal, Zoë Heller presents a novel narrated by Barbara Covett, a history teacher in St. George's, a comprehensive school in north London. When Bethsheba Hart joins the staff as a pottery teacher, Barbara realises that a special person may just have entered her life.

Sheba seems to be much that Barbara is not. She is younger, attractive, apparently free-thinking, married, has children and is irretrievably middle class. What she is not, unfortunately, is an experienced teacher, having trained only after bringing two children into adolescence. She is thus going to find life at St. George's rather tough.

For reasons best known to herself, the sixty-ish, self-assessed "frumpy" Barbara decides to keep a journal. Sheba figures in ... Read More:

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Notes on a Scandal

by: Zoë Heller

January 18, 2007
In Notes On A Scandal, Zoë Heller presents a novel narrated by Barbara Covett, a history teacher in St. George's, a comprehensive school in north London. When Bethsheba Hart joins the staff as a pottery teacher, Barbara realises that a special person may just have entered her life.

Sheba seems to be much that Barbara is not. She is younger, attractive, apparently free-thinking, married, has children and is irretrievably middle class. What she is not, unfortunately, is an experienced teacher, having trained only after bringing two children into adolescence. She is thus going to find life at St. George's rather tough.

For reasons best known to herself, the sixty-ish, self-assessed "frumpy" Barbara decides to keep a journal. Sheba figures in ... Read More:

Average Rating:

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The Believers

by: Zoë Heller

September 25, 2008
In Notes On A Scandal, Zoë Heller presents a novel narrated by Barbara Covett, a history teacher in St. George's, a comprehensive school in north London. When Bethsheba Hart joins the staff as a pottery teacher, Barbara realises that a special person may just have entered her life.

Sheba seems to be much that Barbara is not. She is younger, attractive, apparently free-thinking, married, has children and is irretrievably middle class. What she is not, unfortunately, is an experienced teacher, having trained only after bringing two children into adolescence. She is thus going to find life at St. George's rather tough.

For reasons best known to herself, the sixty-ish, self-assessed "frumpy" Barbara decides to keep a journal. Sheba figures in ... Read More:

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Notes on a Scandal (Penguin Celebrations)

by: Zoe Heller

September 06, 2007
In Notes On A Scandal, Zoë Heller presents a novel narrated by Barbara Covett, a history teacher in St. George's, a comprehensive school in north London. When Bethsheba Hart joins the staff as a pottery teacher, Barbara realises that a special person may just have entered her life.

Sheba seems to be much that Barbara is not. She is younger, attractive, apparently free-thinking, married, has children and is irretrievably middle class. What she is not, unfortunately, is an experienced teacher, having trained only after bringing two children into adolescence. She is thus going to find life at St. George's rather tough.

For reasons best known to herself, the sixty-ish, self-assessed "frumpy" Barbara decides to keep a journal. Sheba figures in ... Read More:

Average Rating:

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Notes on a Scandal

by: Zoe Heller

May 06, 2003
In Notes On A Scandal, Zoë Heller presents a novel narrated by Barbara Covett, a history teacher in St. George's, a comprehensive school in north London. When Bethsheba Hart joins the staff as a pottery teacher, Barbara realises that a special person may just have entered her life.

Sheba seems to be much that Barbara is not. She is younger, attractive, apparently free-thinking, married, has children and is irretrievably middle class. What she is not, unfortunately, is an experienced teacher, having trained only after bringing two children into adolescence. She is thus going to find life at St. George's rather tough.

For reasons best known to herself, the sixty-ish, self-assessed "frumpy" Barbara decides to keep a journal. Sheba figures in ... Read More:

Average Rating:

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The Believers

by: Zoë Heller

May 07, 2009
In Notes On A Scandal, Zoë Heller presents a novel narrated by Barbara Covett, a history teacher in St. George's, a comprehensive school in north London. When Bethsheba Hart joins the staff as a pottery teacher, Barbara realises that a special person may just have entered her life.

Sheba seems to be much that Barbara is not. She is younger, attractive, apparently free-thinking, married, has children and is irretrievably middle class. What she is not, unfortunately, is an experienced teacher, having trained only after bringing two children into adolescence. She is thus going to find life at St. George's rather tough.

For reasons best known to herself, the sixty-ish, self-assessed "frumpy" Barbara decides to keep a journal. Sheba figures in ... Read More:

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Lesley Castle (Hesperus Classics)

by: Jane Austen

February 25, 2005
It is a joy to encounter the youthful Miss Austen with her claws right out: from her great novels you do not quite get the same feel of playfulness with an acid touch. It is also humbling to encounter her powers at an age of only seventeen!
In addition, this Hesperus is edition is very nicely presented.

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Every-thing You Know

by: Zoe Heller

2003
It is a joy to encounter the youthful Miss Austen with her claws right out: from her great novels you do not quite get the same feel of playfulness with an acid touch. It is also humbling to encounter her powers at an age of only seventeen!
In addition, this Hesperus is edition is very nicely presented.