What Was She Thinking?

by Zoe Heller

Don't know where I heard about this book to request it from the library. But when they sent me the email saying that I should come pick up this book that I ordered, I went.

It's about a scandal. A teacher has an affair with one of her high-school students, and another friend of hers records the events surrounding the affair. By the end of the book, I was convinced that this other teacher, who also narrates the book, was far more "evil" than the teacher who started sleeping with a fifteen year old boy. Maybe it's that she acts with malice in her self-indulgence rather than simple thoughtlessness. It's as if because she's more aware and less naive, she's less good. Or maybe it's that her many small sins actually weigh more than one big one.

"There it was again - the perverse refusal to acknowledge my hostility. She seemed to me like some magical lake in a fairy tale: nothing could disturb the mirror-calm of her surface. My snide comments and bitter jokes disappeared soundlessly into her depths, leaving not so much as a ripple.
I would like to say that I was ashamed of myself. I am certainly ashamed now. But what I felt at the time was rage: the boiling rage of defeat."