by JULIET WATERS

Zoë Heller's second novel What Was She Thinking? [Notes on a Scandal] opens at the height of a media frenzy surrounding what seems to be an increasingly popular crime. Sheba Hart is a 42-year-old art teacher charged with the statutory rape of Steven Connolly, the 15-year-old male student she's been having an affair with.

"Her name will probably be familiar to most of you by now," says Barbara Covett, the narrator of this complex and hilarious satire, addressing us as if we're average residents of London, helplessly gobbling up every morsel of this news story. Truth be, even if this is the first time readers will have heard Sheba's name, it's unlikely it's the first time most readers have raptly followed the details of such a case.

To her credit, Heller, an award-winning newspaper columnist, doesn't waste any more trees debating the double standards, defending the innocence, or placing the blame on today's teachers, teenagers etc. Sheba is an attractive, weak-minded and desperate middle-aged teacher who gives into the temptation of sleeping with a reasonably virile teenage boy who has a crush on her. It's very bad behaviour, arguably criminal, but recognizably human. The question Heller raises is not so much why more women teachers don't do this, as why more don't get caught - or even more interesting - why more don't get ratted out. After reading What Was She Thinking? it's almost impossible to believe this crime is all that uncommon.

Heller's wit is savagely cruel, yet deeply empathetic. Character's flaws are rendered with such precision that people seem as familiar as if they lived down the street. From the sullen, savvy, stupid teenagers to the petrified adolescent behaviour of Sheba's fellow teachers, to the condescending superiority of non-teachers, to the glib, small-minded media, no one escapes Heller's furious pen. At the same time there isn't a character that isn't rendered with compassion - so much so that a full 24 hours may pass before you remember why high school teachers sleeping with students is a pretty bad thing.

Another 24 hours may pass before you remember why protecting teacher-student liaisons isn't such a noble thing either. Reviews of Heller's novel have tended to focus on Barbara Covett as the true villainess of this novel. As Sheba's unattractive, older co-worker confidante, she falls neatly into the category of Linda Tripp to Sheba's Monica Lewinsky. She is the archetypal dried-up old spinster, who, despite her wry, wonderfully nasty observations, will lunge at any scrap of friendship thrown her way. Sixty years old, she lives a pathetically lonely life with no companionship except her cat, Portia. She's the only one who stands by Sheba, becoming known to the public as the "saucy teacher's spin doctor." It's easy to see why she adores golden, fragile Sheba. What isn't so clear is what Sheba wants from her.

By writing about what she knows, she is betraying their "friendship." Anyone who jumps too quickly to conclusions about Barbara's guilt, however, is missing the moral subtleties of Heller's tale. Sheba may have been seduced by Stephen, but it seems to be Sheba who seduces Barbara as a friend. Of course "seems" is the operative word here, since Barbara is hardly a reliable narrator. It's clear early on that she's as hopelessly in love with Sheba as Sheba is with Stephen. How Barbara portrays the object of her love may be as absurdly delusional and self-serving as the way in which Sheba relates her own love affair.

It's impossible to know with any certainty what Sheba, or even Barbara, is really thinking. Heller's master accomplishment is to force thoughtful readers to start turning the questions on themselves. What are we thinking when we eat these news stories up? What emptiness in our own lives are we trying to fill by living vicariously through other people's quite ordinary and pathetic crimes? The answer to these questions may be the closest anyone is likely to get to the truth.

What Was She Thinking? [Notes on a Scandal] by Zoë Heller, Henry Holt, hc, 258pp, $23