<b>A lonely schoolteacher reveals more than she intends when she records the story of her best friend’s affair with a pupil in this sly, insightful novel.</b><br><br>Schoolteacher Barbara Covett has led a solitary life until Sheba Hart, the new teacher at St. George’s, befriends her. But even as their relationship develops, so too does another: Sheba has begun an illicit affair with an underage male student. When the scandal turns into a media circus, Barbara decides to write an account in her friend’s defense—and ends up revealing not only Sheba’s secrets but her own.<br><br><i>What Was She Thinking?</i> is a story of repression and passion, envy and complacence, friendship and loneliness. A complex psychological portrait framed as a wicked satire, it is by turns funny, poignant, and sinister. With it, Zoë Heller surpasses the promise of her critically acclaimed first novel, <i>Everything You Know.</i><br><br><b>The basis of the 2006 film, <i>Notes on a Scandal</i>, starring Judi Dench and Kate Blanchett.</b><br><br><b>Praise for <i>What Was She Thinking?</i></b><br><br><b>Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize</b><br><br><b>A <i>New York Times</i> Notable Book</b><br><br><b>One of the Best Books of 2003, <i>Esquire</i> and <i>Entertainment Weekly</i></b><br><br>“Equally adroit at satire and at psychological suspense, Heller charts the course of a predatory friendship and demonstrates the lengths to which some people go for human company.” —<i>The New Yorker</i><br><br>“A deliciously perverse, laugh-out-loud-funny novel.” —<i>Vogue</i><br><br>“A triumph of intelligence and narrative control.” —<i>The London Times</i> (UK)<br><br>“Heller is a great ventriloquist of character, and as the unhinged curator of the Sheba affair, Barbara is painfully note perfect.” —<i>The Washington Post Book World </i>(Best Books of 2003)