An Education
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Review
"Candid, unsentimental and extremely funny. I read it in one glorious go, laughing and crying throughout.' --Zoe Heller
Product Description
When the journalist Lynn Barber was 16, she was picked up at a bus-stop by an attractive older man who drew up in his sports car - and her life was almost wrecked. A bright confident girl, on course to go to Oxford, she began a relationship which, incredibly, was encouraged by her conventional, suburban parents and which took her into the louche, semi-criminal world of west London just as the 1960s began. Ruin beckoned, until one day she made an important discovery.
'An Education', the opening piece of this fascinating memoir, was highly praised when first published in Granta magazine, and is currently being filmed by the BBC with a Nick Hornby script.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Unsatisfactory memoir, but great page turner,
By
This review is from: An Education (Paperback)
This is a very thin autobiography that seems to leave out more than it includes. There are numerous tantalising glimpses of potentially revealing details, which are then never explored. We never find out why Barber's mother is a "beta-minus brain", or what Jonathan and Maria Aitken were really like at Oxford. There is tons of name-dropping, but little in the way of telling tales, which probably ensures that Barber keeps her friends, but disappoints her readers. Those who enjoy reading about Oxbridge bluestockings will find Barber's experiences as an undergraduate are only sketchily recalled, and her recollections of her Penthouse and Fleet Street journalism days aren't a patch on Anne Robinson's.
Yet the book is written in Barber's typically sparkling, tell-it-like-it-is style, and I found it very entertaining. Like Zoe Heller on the cover, and India Knight above, I just couldn't put it down once started, and stayed up into the early hours to finish it, having meant to just read a couple of chapters at bedtime. There are plenty of amusing episodes that made me laugh, and the chapter about her husband's early death (particularly following the chapter relating how they fell in love) made me quite tearful. 'An Education' isn't quite up to the standard set by Lorna Sage's 'Bad Blood', but if you loved the latter, I am sure you will enjoy this book.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Compelling,
By Mrs. K. A. Wheatley "katywheatley" (Leicester, UK) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: An Education (Paperback)
I have yet to see the film of this book, which is supposed to be wonderful. When I saw the book I was determined to read it, and really could not put it down. It is only a short volume, and I believe only a fragment of the book makes up the subject matter of the film, but it is nevertheless compelling at every turn. I finished it within twenty four hours of picking it up. Barber writes about her life with clarity, a refreshing lack of vanity and humour. I particularly loved the sections of the book about her work at Penthouse and found the last section, dealing with the illness and death of her husband profoundly moving. Barber is articulate, thoughtful and incisive. Her life has been interesting and is more than worthy of a volume four times the size of this one. I hope, one day, she writes more.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A gem...,
By
This review is from: An Education (Paperback)
Some reviewers have described Lynn Barber's 'An Education' as cool and unrevealing, but I have to say it didn't seem that way to me at all. On the contrary, 'An Education' is refreshingly concise, direct and, yes, cool - but in a good way. A beautifully written, crisp memoir, covering in - oh joy! - fewer than 200 pages the life to date that has made her the great writer and interviewer that she is.
The book offers a number of clues to how she came to lead a crowded Fleet Street field - not only is she completely open and frank, with a directness that unfairly earned her the soubriquet 'Demon Barber' but why anyone should want to be otherwise baffles her (the hilarious encounter with Alan Whicker, who tries, and fails, to shame her with her previous life in pornography being a case in point). Word of warning, though, to anyone who comes to this expecting the book of the film - that episode, though clearly key in her developing outlook on life, takes up less than a quarter of the book. Don't let it put you off though - her adventures at the nascent Penthouse and Independent (and the divide between those two august organs gives a clue to her non-judgemental openness) are equally engaging, warm, funny and, yes, human. A terrific read and entirely of a piece with her other writing. If you like Lynn Barber at all, you'll love this.
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