Currently Reading: Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller
Geekgasm!!! This little book has been on my reading list for quite some time, but I’d
only ever found really boring editions (You know me, if it ain’t pretty, I ain’t reading it). Besides, I’d seen the film, so there was no great rush. BUT THEN, I saw this Penguin contemporary classics edition in Metropolis Books (one of my favourite Melbourne bookshops). I couldn’t really afford it at the time, but I began to obsess. I started finding copies in every book shop I went into. I had dreams about the cover. THEN Australian Book review paid me for a piece I’d written for them. It was a sign. I cycled to Readings as fast as I could.
The book itself is AWESOME. I’m already halfway through and having to stop myself from gobbling the rest of it down in one gulp. Barbara is the creepiest narrator, she’s right up there with Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert and the fruit bat from Poe’s ‘The Tell-tale Heart’. Best of all, the story is every bit as deliciously scandalous as the title promises. We’re talking student/teacher affairs, repressed homosexual longings, marriage breakdowns, obsession, desire, the kit and caboodle. I’m not going to give you a neat little plot summary; give yourself a decadent little treat and go read it for yourself.
