Zoë Heller’s novel What Was She
Thinking is a sly and uncomfortable work. 
Barbara Covett, a schoolteacher and a spinster, narrates the events
looking back on them.  Barbara is a
woman used to spending time on her own, because she has no close friends and no
family.  She plots to befriend a new art
teacher at her school, St. George’s; a younger married woman called Sheba.  At first, Sheba hardly notices her, but
Barbara manages to steal her friendship away from another colleague, and at the
time of writing, the two women are living together.  Sheba is awaiting trial for having a sexual relationship with one
of her students, Steven Connolly, who was 15 when the affair started.  Barbara tells the story of how it all
happened, as she has managed to piece it together from talking with Sheba. 

At first Barbara seems rather
likable, with her strong opinions and independent ways.  She is wonderfully unsympathetic towards
problem students, and she writes in a report to the idealistic headmaster about
a class trip on which stealing occurred:

Gavin Breech, whom I regard as the
ringleader of the shoplifting expedition, is a very nasty little fellow: angry,
violent, and I would hazard, a bit mad. 
… The periodic eruption of unruly, and even criminal behaviour in our
student body would seem to be a fact of school life for the foreseeable future.   Given the socioeconomic profile of our
catchment area, only a fool would imagine otherwise. 

However, as Barbara sets out
Sheba’s infatuation with Connolly, she is utterly unwilling to countenance that
he may have been harmed by his relationship with his teacher. It becomes clear
that her own loneliness makes her want to make Sheba blameless.  Sheba’s marriage to an older man is not
going very well, and Sheba finds it difficult being a good mother to her
adolescent daughter.  Yet it remains
unclear why Sheba allows herself to make such a terrible mistake and to behave
so irresponsibly, and one is left to conclude that she is just immature.  She does not really feel comfortable with
the role of wife or mother, and she becomes obsessed by this teenaged boy.  

Yet Heller does not let her reader
stay sure that Barbara is a reliable narrator. 
Sheba finds the notes that Barbara has been writing, and accuses her of
making up details.  Barbara also betrays
her own weakness and lack of forthrightness, and we are left to question to
what extent her rejection of men and her longing for female friendship is a
mask for homosexuality. 

So What Was She Thinking is
a well-written novel that refuses to fall into any clear genre.  It shows people as complex and
self-deceiving, and it leaves the reader unsure how to react.  It is worth reading. 

© 2005 Christian Perring. All
rights reserved.

Christian Perring, Ph.D., is
Chair of the Philosophy Department at Dowling College, Long Island, and editor
of Metapsychology Online Review.  His main research is on
philosophical issues in medicine, psychiatry and psychology.

Categories: Fiction