What Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal by Zoë Heller

While the narrator of this book, Barbara Covett, thinks she's explaining (or possibly exonerating) her friend Sheba Hart's affair with a student at the school where they both worked, she's actually revealing her own obsessions and ticks. It's a portrait of a lonely woman, at times quite moving, and at others frankly disturbing, and a demonstration of how someone who feels sure of herself and her actions comes off as clueless to others. I enjoyed this book, especially because of its unreliable narrator. A haunting read. Booker shortlisted, 2003.