Zoe Heller - ‘The Believers’

Review by Peter Lawrence May 21st '09.
Zoe Heller took the world by storm with her last novel, ‘Notes On a Scandal’, in which she dealt very courageously with the difficult subject of a sexual relationship between a female teacher and a fifteen year old boy. Heller tackled the taboo of teenage sex and adults led by their emotions rather than their heads with great sensitivity and skill and won justly deserved praise for her work. The book served not only to entertain but also to instruct and provoke thought and debate. It was ultimately turned into a very successful film starring Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett.
This new novel does not disappoint. Here Heller shows that she can be consistently excellent. The subject matter this time could not be more different, but I came away from the novel having enjoyed my time with it immensely. It entertains, it instructs and it thrills.
Audrey is a sixty something English matriarch of the most fearsome kind, living in New York with her American husband Joel, a feisty and brutally successful lawyer. They have been married for forty years and have fallen into the kind of happiness and acceptance of each other that leads to one taking for granted that one knows all there is to know about the other. At the start of the book Joel is lying in a coma having suffered two strokes.
There are three children. Rosa, who comes from a background of revolution and anarchy but now finds herself forging a relationship with Orthodox Judaism; Karla, desperately unhappy in a conventional marriage and job and looking for love even though she doesn’t know it; and adopted son Lenny, the apple of Audrey’s eye, who can do no wrong in her eyes despite the fact that he can do no right in anyone else’s. All five rub along together reasonably well until Audrey makes a completely life-changing and devastating discovery about her husband that throws everything she has never questioned into complete disarray. All of them believe, as the title suggests, in a world they have become familiar with and never had cause to question. Now, the security of the radicalism they have espoused for so long has been dealt a fatal blow.
All of the main characters are very well drawn and utterly believable. Whilst we may not see ourselves in the midst of such domestic mayhem, we are completely convinced by the tribulations of this particular household. Heller uses the third person throughout the book, so there is no one dominant voice. This is a complete departure from the intimacy of ‘Notes on a Scandal’. Audrey is something of a monster, by far the biggest and most engaging character, spitting venom and fury at all around her, particularly at her long suffering friend Jean, but nonetheless she does not dominate the whole book.
What does dominate are the ideas and securities that we all hold dear and never scrutinise or challenge, the stability that we all take for granted. What make us engage with the book, and feel its discomfort so profoundly, is the knowledge that it could so easily happen to us. The circumstances might be different and less dramatic, and the values and beliefs different too, but the devastating consequences can be the same. Ultimately, though, we can all reconcile ourselves to change and be strengthened by it.
Zoe Heller is a novelist of consummate skill. She has achieved in fiction a very compelling portrayal, as in her previous book, of issues of morality and great human significance. She shows that these matters can be dealt with as brilliantly in fiction as in factual debate and investigation.

Zoe Heller - Notes on a Scandal

Review by Maggie Perkovic 16th October 2008:
This is an engrossing book telling of an affair between a school teacher, Sheba, and her pupil 15yr old Steven. Sheba has just started the new school term in a north London comprehensive. She has high ideals but no sense of distance or discipline to her pupils. With a family life of her own, an older husband, troublesome teenage daughter and down's syndrome son, she's lost a little of the spark and romance in her life.. What makes the story different is it is recounted by her colleague, Barbara, a senior teacher approaching retirement. We can see that although disapproving of the liaison, Barbara enjoys being her confidante and indeed has quite a deep affection for the confused and misguided Sheba. But devastation is bound to follow and her behaviour is responsible for the inevitable unhappy conclusion.
Well written and enthralling. It was released as a film early in 2007 starring Judi Dench & Cate Blanchett.

bookshow 21st May '09

Guests to-day were Peter Lawrence a rookie on this show & Malcolm Martland(an old hand)
Peter enjoys reading all category of books - travel, history, fact, fiction and has enjoyed reading, Iris Murdoch, Hilary Mantel, Margaret Atwood, Philip Roth, John Updike.
Peter chose his books today because they are such prolific writers: Zoe Heller & Kate Atkinson.
Peter and I both very much enjoyed Margaret Attwood's Oryx & Crake, I would never had read it if I had not belonged to the book group so for that I am eternally grateful, and Wilbur Smiths River God.

Malcolm reviewed a Jeffrey Deaver. The Jeffrey Deaver I remember was film 'The Bone Collector' which starred Denzel Washington & Angeline Jolie. It was based on Deavers book 'The Bone Collector' which has his character Rhymes, as a quadriplegic, after an accident left him that way. Excellent film.

Malcolm also reviewed in more depth Ian Aitch ' We're British Innit' which is like an A-Z of quintessential British things, like Malcolm chose to quote from the book 'C' for church bells. I chose 'I' for Innit: This useful piece of punctuation can be used to end any sentence in Britain, providing a simple reaffirmation of the facts therein (It is well hot, innit?) or adding emphasis to the need for confirmation of a fact from a companion (Are you going to the cinema, innit?). The genius of the word is that it can be retrospectively applied to classic literature or speeches and still make sense. So, Shakespeare may ask ‘To be, or not to be, innit?’.