Notes on Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller

It’s about (and narrated by) an older woman who makes friends with a young woman who is having an affair with a very young man. Older woman is “obsessed” with young woman, young woman is “obsessed” with young man, etc. There was a movie.

I liked this book, but did not quite understand why it creeped people out. I guess the idea of someone being lonely enough to become obsessed with someone is harder for most people to understand than being obsessed with someone because…well, actually. When you think about it, while the two women are treated differently, they really are obsessed for the same reason. The older woman is a spinster, completely alone except for a dying cat. The younger woman is a 40-something year old who is constantly portrayed as having just fallen into her life, rather than choosing it – a disconnection which snowballs into the subtler, but just as devastating loneliness that leads to her having an affair with a 15-year old.

Barbara (the older woman) certainly had moments of raging megalomania – but what would you expect to be the result of prolonged loneliness? It’s not so much the space without, really – having been very lonely in my life, it’s really your mind that starts preying on you. Too many thoughts and no one to share them with. She actually confesses something to this effect during the book; she’s not unaware, after all, of her situation. Sheba (the 40-something), however, is completely unaware of the reason compelling her to behave the way she does. It’s an interesting little story.

That’ll do me for book reviews for the year.