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An Education
 
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An Education (Paperback)

by Lynn Barber (Author)
3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
RRP: £8.99
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Product details

  • Paperback: 192 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin (25 Jun 2009)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0141039558
  • ISBN-13: 978-0141039558
  • Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.8 x 1.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 285 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #33 in  Books > Biography

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Product Description

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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Customer Reviews

11 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.8 out of 5 stars (11 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars This is a brilliant book, 9 Jul 2009
By India Knight (London, England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
As per Zoe Heller's quote, I also read this in one great, greedy gulp while dinner burnt and children went unfed - aside from its many other virtues, An Education is unputdownable, by turns hysterically funny, illuminating, jaw-dropping and, towards the end, unbearably moving. Lynn Barber writes beautifully, with honesty and a frankness that is occasionally devastating, and without an iota of sentimentality or self-pity as she tells her story, which I defy you not to be gripped by - parents, class, sex, love, dodgy blokes, Oxford, Penthouse, and the rest. There isn't a boring sentence in the entire book, which isn't something you find yourself saying very often.

It's the best memoir I've read in years, a timely antidote to all those bloated, windy reminiscences - 'What, little me?' - that feel like they're written with a pen dipped in special extra-smug ink. Lynn's pen is dipped in truth serum instead. I can't think of anyone who wouldn't love reading it.
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6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars A slight let down, 12 Aug 2009
By Campbell79 (England) - See all my reviews
I bought this book on the basis of some of the "good" reviews here - not a good idea if you are thinking of doing the same.

Lynn rattles through her life without really telling very much at all, the only chapter which doesn't read as though she is writing for the sake of it, is the chapter about her husband's demise (which is written with feeling and care), the rest of the book is a series of 'I did such and such', 'I went to so and so' without elaborating, also her persistence in telling the reader how intelligent and pretty she was/is is rather tiresome. She also name drops quite a lot but with little effect as no details are given.

The synopsis on the reverse of the book talks mainly of the lover she had from being a sixteen year old and for a couple of years thereafter and how he conned her and her parents, but by her own admission, she was more taken by his friends than she was actually by him, so why devote so much to him - well, because nothing much else of note is in the book, despite her age and varied life.

I am surprised that this is "soon to be the subject of a major film scripted by Nick Hornby" since if it anything like this book, it will have little substance and it will certainly require a lot of poetic licence to make it of interest.
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9 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A great book, 24 Jun 2009
By sam b (london) - See all my reviews
An Education is a wonderful book - very funny in places but also sad when Lynn's husband dies towards the end. Differs from most memoirs in being so unsentimental and steers clear of tedious soul searching.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A real page turner
Terrific book. A real page turner. Very well written (of course). I enjoyed it so much that I immediately handed it on to someone else who completely agrees with me... Read more
Published 4 days ago by Anna

5.0 out of 5 stars An Education in itself
A fascinating story, from her teens in the 60s to recent widowhood, of an educated woman born at the end of the War - her trials and tribulations, some of the fascinating people... Read more
Published 26 days ago by Penny Farthing

4.0 out of 5 stars Unsatisfactory memoir, but great page turner
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... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Third Time Lucky

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good Read
I really enjoyed this book having heard it being plugged on the radio. It moves from chapter to chapter being both witty and informative whilst illustrating how lives can change... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Mrs. Linda Williams

5.0 out of 5 stars Funny autobiography
Having never heard of Lynn Barber I was unsure of what to expect, this autobiography however was easily one of the best I have read. Read more
Published 2 months ago by J. Thompson

3.0 out of 5 stars not so great, except in spots
I was so moved by a searingly honest excerpt of Lynn Barber's "An Education" that appeared a couple of weeks ago in the Guardian that I ordered the book forthwith. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Caraculiambro

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting read
This book is a very interesting account of a charismatic person's life and times.
She is open about her distaste for her parents who were taken in by a con man.
Published 3 months ago by Maureen M. Toyn

1.0 out of 5 stars Tiresome
I was very disappointed in this book. As Nick Hornby is working on the film script and the blurb alludes to an interesting life education, I thought it would at the very least be... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Mrs. A. E. Stoker

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