Notes on a Scandal
What:
Notes on a Scandal
Who:
Zoë Heller
Where:
Every self-respecting fiction-selling bookshop.
How much:
$22.95
Sometimes seeing the movie before you read the book can be kind of OK. But this relies on many things including casting so creative it outruns anything your imagination could invent (cases in point include Kathleen Turner as Mrs Lisbon in The Virgin Suicides, Marlon Brando as Vito Corleone and that creepy redrum kid in The Shining).
Other times, it's vitally important to read a book first, before the images of Cate Blanchett and the Bond-tainted Judi Dench, for instance, are burned irrevocably onto your retinas. In short, go and grab Zoë Heller's Notes on a Scandal quick smart. Published in 2003, Notes is Heller's second novel, and was shortlisted that year for the Man Booker Prize. It's a mini symphony of betrayal told by a vividly disturbed narrator, but with such an innocuous, everyday school and home backdrop that the veiled menace rivals dinnertime at Laura Palmer's house.
Format: Book
Motivation: Good with a whiskey in the bath
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