An Education [Paperback]

Lynn Barber (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 29, 2010

The inspiration for the award-winning motion picture: "Candid, unsentimental and extremely funny. I read it in one glorious go, laughing and crying throughout."—Zoë Heller

When Lynn Barber was sixteen, a stranger in a maroon sports car pulled up beside her as she was on her way home from school and offered her a ride. It was the beginning of a long journey from innocence to precocious experience—an affair with an older man that would change her life. Barber’s seducer left her with a taste for luxury hotels and posh restaurants and trips abroad, expensive habits that she managed to support in later life as a successful London journalist whose barbed interviews at once terrorized and fascinated her smart-set subjects.

A poignant, shockingly candid account of the stages in a literary life—from promiscuity at Oxford to a stint at Penthouse to a complex marriage that endured—An Education is a classic of English memoir.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“[Barber’s] a suburban girl who’s frightened that she’s going to get cut out of everything good that happens in the city. That, to me, is a big story in popular culture. It’s the story of pretty much every rock ‘n’ roll band.” (Nick Hornby, author of the screenplay adaptation of An Education )

About the Author

Lynn Barber studied English at Oxford University. She began her career in journalism at Penthouse, and has since worked for a number of major British newspapers and for Vanity Fair. She has won five British Press Awards and has published two volumes of her celebrated interviews, Mostly Men and Demon Barber.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Atlas (January 29, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1934633852
• ISBN-13: 978-1934633854
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #505,601 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lynn Barber studied English at Oxford University. She began her career in journalism at Penthouse, and has since worked for a number of major British newspapers and for Vanity Fair. She has won five British Press Awards and has published two volumes of her celebrated interviews, Mostly Men and Demon Barber.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I really liked this book...., December 9, 2009

By 

Anne Salazar "inveterate reader" (Huntington Beach, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: An Education (Paperback)

I really liked this book which I bought after seeing the movie and reading Lynn Barber's long interview in The Guardian. It is refreshing to read a straight-forward, honest autobiography/memoir. What was missing in the movie was that she got tired of Simon long before her parents found out he was a liar and a creep; in the movie, you get the impression she was having the time of her life and was shocked to find out that Simon was anything other than what he told her he was. The record is set straight in the book where we learn that she thought he was weird at best and would have stopped seeing him but for the encouragement, almost insistence, of her parents, especially her father. The education she got from Simon was that people are almost always NOT as they appear. Hello Tiger Woods? (sorry)

I did like this book, though, which I thought was well written. It is always interesting to read about other people's lives to see why they took the directions in life that they did. In this case, Lynn Barber wanted to be a journalist, and she worked as a journalist wherever she could get a job. Her first job was at Penthouse magazine. Sobeit. She learned and moved on. She also became a wife and mother, jobs she didn't think she wanted or was cut out for but that she ended up loving after all. All in all, she was a lucky lady.

29 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars very light, February 21, 2010

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a reviewer - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: An Education (Paperback)

It should be noted that the movie is based on only about 25 pages of this book, and they're much less detailed and in depth than what is presented in the film. So if you're interested in reading this book because you want to hear more details about weekends in Paris and the relationship presented in the movie etc this isn't worth buying (though there were small details I found interesting like the author buying Je Reviens perfume instead of Chanel No 5 like what's presented in the movie.) It's also interesting that Lynn's character (Jennie) was made more innocent and naive in the movie. In the book she never has many feelings for Simon (David) and is soon suspicious and bored of his character, and even tries to leave him after she gets too bored with him and has to study for her entrance exams (this is the reason why Simon proposes to her, which makes a lot more sense than what's presented in the movie.) Though this book is interesting, it's a very light read. It reads more like outline than a novel, I feel, given the lax description of anything. I can definitely tell that a journalist wrote this book. I am impressed with the way Nick Hornby expanded so much and truly made a work of fiction just based on something light like this. It's interesting that instead of a book being turned into a movie and the movie being just a shortened version of the book, the movie was actually more detailed. Worth comparing the two if you're interested in book to film translations.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The title says it all, November 8, 2009

By 

Drimble Wedge (Oxfordshire, England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: An Education (Kindle Edition)

When she was 16, Lynn Barber got into a car with a strange man. Soon - and with her parents' blessing - this obviously dodgy character was showing her a good time in London's West End and eventually he proposed. She was going to Oxford, but why bother, her parents said, when a man with money presented himself? How typical of the Striving 60s! Barber says this experience taught her to doubt the claims people make about themselves - no bad thing for a journalist. She never lost the readiness to go for it that got her to Oxford and glittering prizes that include five awards and gigs with Penthouse, the Observer and Vanity Fair. Grab the chance to read this entertaining memoir while it's being republished alongside Nick Hornby's film adaptation. When she describes her husband's final illness, this entertaining, artfully shaped memoir segues into a moving coda.