An Education by Barber, Lynn (2009) Paperback

by Lynn Barber

Lynn Barber's true story is now a major film of the same name scripted by Nick Hornby. At 16, Lynn Barber was an ambitious schoolgirl working towards a place at Oxford, when she was picked up at a bus-stop by an attractive older man in a sports car. So began a relationship that almost wrecked her life. Barber's fascinating memoir takes us beyond this bizarre episode, revealing how it left her with an abiding mistrust of men which paradoxically led her to a promiscuous life-style at university until she met her husband-to-be. "An Education" tells how she went on to work for seven years at daring (for the times) men's magazine "Penthouse' before beginning her starry days as the Demon Barber - Britain's most entertaining and most feared interviewer. The book ends with an extraordinarily moving account of the early death of her husband. Her writing is refreshingly frank and funny.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography, Autobiography, Biography Memoir, British Literature, Audiobook

Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Grace · Rating 1 out of 5]

Author and award winning journalist Lynn Barber's life is fascinating. She had an affair at 16 with an older, married man. Her first journalism job out of Oxford was at Penthouse. She won awards over the course of three decades. With a life like that, you'd think that her memoir would be spectacular, full of hilarious and poignant stories as she navigated school, marriage, her career, the births of two children, sex discrimination, and the death of her husband. But it's not. Her memoir is shallow and boring. It is a perfect example of what happens when a writer breaks one of the cardinal rules of writing "Show, don't tell." I am shocked and appalled that an award winning journalist could butcher her own life like this, turning it and herself into mindless drivel that drones on for 172 pages. Thank goodness it was so short because I doubt I could have handled much more. And what writer could sum up her adolescent and adult life, especially one of such caliber and minor celebrity, in under 200 pages? I'm just thankful the book ended and that I can return it to the library.

[Elaine Mullane || Elaine and the Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a thing for memoirs. I understand people's concerns that memoirs more than often show a very one-sided account of events, but I like to think I can remain objective while enjoying some time inside someone else's head. An Education has been on my shelf for many years, which is why I have tackled it as part of my current 'Backlist Readathon'.

English Journalist Lynn Barber was just sixteen when she began a two-year relationship with a much older man. She was a studious teenager working towards her application to Oxford when she was swept off her feet by someone who took her virginity and went on to deceive both her and her parents.

This memoir exposes how this strange teenage love affair coloured the rest of Lynn's life, leading to her instinctive distrust of others. It recounts her promiscuous lifestyle at St. Anne's College in Oxford before meeting her husband, David; her marriage and six years as a stay at home mother; her early career with Penthouse magazine and her subsequent career with a number of publications including The Sunday Times and The Observer. And, in her poignant and frank words, this memoirs gives us a glimpse into the suffering and early death of her husband.

An Education is a razor sharp and utterly readable story about the loss of innocence and the awkward and sometimes painful period of limbo between girlhood and womanhood. It is searingly honest, witty and very, very moving. 4 stars.

[Tatiana · Rating 3 out of 5]

As the majority of people who are currently reading An Education, I became interested in this book only because of the Oscar-nominated version of Lynn Barber's affair with an older man - I simply wanted to know if there was more to her story than shown on the big screen. In some ways, there was.

The movie is based on just one chapter of this very short book and, I have to say, the movie makers took quite a few liberties with the story. To my surprise, the real affair wasn't quite as dramatic as portrayed in the adaptation and the heroine wasn't quite that naive or that in love with the man.

As far as the rest of this memoir goes, I probably would have never picked up this book, simply because I have never heard of Lynn Barber before. Barber is evidently a known in some circles interviewer and a journalist. Maybe I am wrong, but aren't you supposed to be a famous person to write and publish an autobiography, otherwise who would care to read about your life? I don't mean that An Education is a bad book, but it is the type of book that any person could write. This memoir is not particularly detailed or mind-blowing, but a succinct story of Barber's life which is pretty much ordinary. It contains a few anecdotes about her affair with a much older man, about her promiscuous youth, of her work at "Penthouse" and other publications, and of her marriage. And that's about it.

Pretty much An Education is an engaging and short life story of a totally insignificant person

[Plateresca · Rating 4 out of 5]

'I am of an age (sixty-five) where most people start worrying about Alzheimer's and panicking if they forget a name. But I won't even notice when I get Alzheimer's because I've had such a flaky memory all my life.'

I read this book because I'd watched the stylish film. The particular chapter that the film is based on is interesting in itself, but of course it gets more interesting when one compares it to the film. Then come the hilarious chapters about Lynn's work as a journalist, and in the end, a heart-rending account of her husband's illness and death. These parts of the book are so different, I don't know how to rate the book; but then again, I'm talking about it as if it were fiction, which it is not, - and yet it reads just like fiction.

Well, she does have a way with words, and she did have an interesting life, so this is a very readable, swift autobiography, funny and sometimes touching.

[C · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is one of the few times I believe the movie was better than the book. I had such a hard time liking this. The author spends the whole book tooting her own horn, and blaming everything bad on everyone else. She comes off as the kind of person who is always trying to remind everyone how wonderfully intelligent and special she is. I literally groaned as she mentioned how smart she was, and how all the children didn't like her because of it. Really? Are you sure it wasn't because you acted, and seem to still believe, you were better than them?

[Andrea Mullarkey · Rating 4 out of 5]

When a colleague told me we’d gotten this screenplay and that we now own the book, the screenplay and the movie I thought it would make a great choice for our Book Into Film series. For no reason I can fathom, I read the screenplay before the memoir. It was wonderful, witty and fast and a bit heart-breaking. After the screenplay I watched the film and was pleased to see that Lone Scherfig had captured all of that and the wonderful style of 1960s London.

Charmed by both the screenplay and the film I turned to Lynn Barber’s memoir. I knew that it covered her entire life and not just the one chapter on which the film was based. Encountering Barber’s direct prose and unembellished style I saw how a relatively short chapter could become a feature-length film. But what surprised me was how different the stories were. Hornby said in his introduction to the screenplay that he wanted to change the names of the leads to allow him some license with the story. But he took such license that I am not sure I would have recognized the story if I’d read them in the other order. There were certain moments that were lifted straight from Barber’s narrative and I could follow these like beads on a string. Still, I know why the opening credits say the film was “inspired by” Barber’s memoir.

Nevertheless, it was not so distracting that I couldn’t enjoy the book. Barber has led quite a life. Every era was fascinating from her child hood as the daughter of an elocution teacher through her young adult life as a party girl at Oxford and into her journalism career which took her from Penthouse to writing sex manuals and finally to writing for The Independent and Vanity Fair. Not every chapter is fun or funny, but each resonates with emotion and the excitement of a life fully lived. The story on which the film is based is simply another entertaining chapter in an engrossing story.

In the end I would say the best thing I did when reading these two was to read them in the order I did. As different as the screenplay is from the memoir I think I would have been disappointed if I became attached to the real Lynn Barber and then saw her life turned inside out for the film. But reading the screenplay first, I could enjoy Jenny and David’s story and then meet Lynn as her own person. And given that, I would recommend them both and encourage readers and viewers to save the memoir for after the screenplay and film.

[Oriana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I should just say, by the by, that this is one of my absolute favorite ways to read: I scored this book at the Brokelyn Book Swap (I forget what I traded for it; certainly some crap), and I knew and know absolutely nothing about it. I've never heard of Lynn Barber, I only know this book was made into a movie because it says so loudly on the back (and because Elizabeth kindly pointed it out below), I don't even know what the book is going to be about. But it turns out that I love it! It's the British-est thing I've come across since The Young Ones. It's charming and clever and funny. I'm still waiting to find out what it is about her life that got her a memoir (and a movie deal), but I don't even mind the wait.

***

Oh man, I really need to review books right after I finish them, before I forget all the clever things I was going to say. Ummm, this book was lots of fun and very witty and did I mention British? Oh my, so so British. Lynn Barber is apparently a very famous British journalist, known as "Demon Barber" for being a relentless bitch of an interviewer. But she is so charming in this memoir, it's kind of hard to believe. Or no, not that exactly, but anyway it seems reasonable that such a clever and strong and sensible woman would take no shit from famous people.

She got her start at Penthouse, so clearly she is more interesting than someone with just a journalism degree from a fancy college. I love the part where she is first working at Penthouse as a proofreader and she and the editor have arguments about serial commas and em-dashes. Let me tell you, as a copyeditor, I have strong feelings about punctuation, obvs probably too strong, and it's so lovely hearing about other people who care about it. Also, as a veteran journalist and interviewer, she has a piercingly good ability to both size up and then interestingly describe people, and so all of the characters in here sparkle with life. Her parents are hilariously awful, her coworkers are hilariously terrifying (at Penthouse, of course, the woman in charge of the business side of things is a former stripper and dominatrix with a crazy African British accent and very odd priorities), her husband is hilariously wonderful, etc.

I like that a lot of the memoir is focused on her early life, which is just an interesting story of a small-town girl being seduced and taken for a ride by a much older gentleman with bad ulterior motives. Although, if I'd known that I was reading the memoir of a famous journalist, this probably would have annoyed me, because I would have been impatient for her to grow up and talk about the "good stuff." Which is all another reason why I'm very pleased I didn't know anything about this going in. I wish it were easier, or even possible, to do that more often, and know that the results were likely to be good.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like many, I picked up this title after seeing the movie, and thinking that there was more to that story, and I wanted to read about it. I was astonished that the movie (well-told, emotionally satisfying) was adapted from one slim chapter in the book. A faithful adaptation, as well, except that our young protagonist seems rather more worldly than the charming naivete exhibited by Carey Mulligan; and that Peter Saarsgard is likely more handsome than the rakish lover in the book. That slim chapter packed in more story and character than many full-length novels, and I was so glad there was more to read.

The structure of this memoir was not conventional -- each chapter is self-contained about a topic such as work, husband, etc -- and each would stand up on its own. What binds the entire work together is the force of Barber's voice. She's disarming in her easy candor, strings words together that pull you through a seemingly simple sentence. Never sentimental, yet surprisingly forceful. I was stunned into silence at the emotional impact that at times snuck up on me -- the last chapter and the genius postscript wrapped up the entire body of work in the final sentence. Other times I laughed out loud, or rudely snickered, two things that rarely happen while reading. Her effortless prose and singular voice make this the second-best memoir I've read in the last five years, and firmly place it in my top-ten memoirs, a place of honor in a genre clogged with mediocrity.

[Stay Fetters · Rating 3 out of 5]

"I came to believe that other people- even when you think you know them well- are ultimately unknowable."

Many, many moons ago I read this book for the first time. I was a lot younger and very immature. Thought that this was quite scandalous for a book. (Boy, how naive was I?) While this is my second time reading this, I’ve learned that this wasn’t at all what I remembered it to be.

Lynn keeps no secrets and wears her past like a badge of honor. An affair with an older man, pfft. Working for Penthouse, *yawn* Living a very salacious life while younger, just another day. To us this is huge but to her this was just another day in her ordinary life. I love her attitude towards all of this and it shines through in these pages.

‘An Education’ used to be one of my favorite reads and now it’s just a quick and somewhat scandalous read. While not much heavy detail is revealed, I still find this an intriguing read and one I’ll reread again.

[Booklover Butterfly · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I picked up An Education by Lynn Barber, I was expecting something different from the book, but I wasn’t disappointed by what it delivered. It follows Lynn through various periods of her life, focusing a lot on her dating and love life as well as touching on her schooling and career. The synopsis on the back of the book is a bit deceptive in my opinion. I was under the impression that the memoir would focus almost solely on her experience as a 16-year-old in a relationship with a mysterious, much older man. That isn’t the case. The memoir touches on many stages of her life. It doesn’t follow every detail of her life all the way until the present, but rather it floats around touching on a certain event and then drifting around until it touches another event, and not necessarily in chronological order.

I found Lynn’s earlier years (pre-Oxford) to be the most enthralling part of her story. Even though it only takes up a small portion of the book, it is by far the most memorable. Lynn has certainly had a number of very interesting experiences during her life, but her relationship with the older man is what stands out. If you are seeking to read this memoir based on seeing and liking the film, you may be disappointed by how little of the memoir actually covers what you saw in the film. If you are haven’t seen the film yet but are predominantly interested in the older man younger woman relationship, I almost want to say skip the memoir and go see the film instead. That’s not to say that the memoir isn’t good. I just want to be clear that there very little time actually spent on that event in her life.

After finishing An Education, I still can’t define my feelings towards Lynn. She had some very admirable qualities such as her intelligence and strength to overcome things, but she also seemed cold and distant to me at times. There were certain times during the memoir where I struggled to relate to her or understand what motivated her actions and behavior. One thing that is certain is that she has led a unique and fascinating life. For those who enjoy memoirs and don’t have any preconceived expectations, I’d recommend reading this. It’s a quick read that would be perfect for a lazy Sunday.

[Suzie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Huh. Very different from the film. Lynn Barber has certainly led an interesting life, though. Overall, an okay book.

[beatricks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Listened to the whole short audiobook in one night. The first few sections I thought were wonderful. What is extraordinary is not her experience in the palm of a much older and corrupt man, but how she moved forward with resolve never to do things the same way again. Unable to trust, least of all her parents, yet eager to experience. It spoke to my experience as a teen and honestly shed some unexpected light on old traumas. Her latter stories are interesting as well, but she paints herself as an unlikeable person -- seemingly by reputation, e.g. her "Demon Barber" interview style, and the standards of of society -- and you never really get to know her beyond that. You know she loves her family and birdwatching because she says so, but she doesn't tell any stories of her inner life as an adult. It's all career stories and being seen as troublesome by everyone. It's very odd and ends on the oddest note of the book, her being glad that her recently deceased husband probably had an affair because it made up for her being a bad wife. Was she actually a bad wife in any way? No idea. Humans are unknowable, says the moral of her story, the sum of her education. Most of all Lynn Barber.

I do recommend the audiobook, by the way -- the reader has a lovely crisp inflection and does several accents and impressive recitations when called for while discussing elocution, which I certainly would not have gotten out of the words on paper.

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

Admittedly I read this after watching the film so came to it with some premeditated ideas on what to expect. Needless to say I wasn't disappointed by the memoir of her early life, the emotion was raw and she wasn't afraid to open up about the truth around, what can only be described as, the sordid affair (on his behalf mainly). The blurb of the book, however, claims that the memoirs are a description of how the affair affected her life; presumably to sell it along with the movie. Once her younger years were over and we are given an insight into her career, the emotion wears off, there is no longer any reference to how her younger years affected the rest of her life and it becomes merely a few chapters of name dropping, a list of her achievements and simply stating fact. I began to lose empathy as the book went on. The only time she opened up again was when talking about her husband's battle with cancer. Even then, the book just stops and no consolidation is given. Apart from a slight remark on the affair. Definitely read before watching the film, otherwise you get a tainted view of the book. There is more emotion in the book at the beginning than in the film, but there isn't much to look forward to once we delve into her career.

[Irene · Rating 2 out of 5]

As most everyone, I became interested in this book when I realized that the Carey Mulligan movie had been inspired by true events, and that the original "Jenny" had composed a much more extensive memoir of her life.

Barber's life was certainly full of interesting events: her solitary childhood, her affair at 16, her bohemian college life, meeting and snatching the man of her life, her first hand experience at the birth of Penthouse and her work relationship with its founders, her career as an interviewer, and coping with her husband's illness.
All this certainly makes for a entertaining read. Unfortunately, Barber rarely goes beyond the bare facts other life, offering a juicy anecdote here and there, and some of her personal insights on the events which shaped her life, but hardly anything more.
As a whole, this short memoir is nice but not at all... ahem... memorable. The fact that its author is a professional writer certainly suggests that a lot more could have been done with it.

[Tosh · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was seduced by the graphic design of the cover, and it started off well, but it then turned into something really not interesting to me. i never heard of Lynn Barber before I picked up this book. But it starts off about her teenage affair with an older man, who of course was sort of a con-artist. The thing is I find him more fascinating than the author.

The middle part of the book is about her career as a journalist for various British newspapers and magazines, including Vanity Faire - but again there are touches of interest, but i don't get a full image of what it was like to work for the British Journalist world. So one just get sketches.

The third and last part is about her late husband's illness. Which is gripping, but it was also depressing of course. The book moves from section to section, but it doesn't feel like a whole book to me. When you compare it to something like Patti Smith's remarkable memoir, this is kid's stuff.

[Kristin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not really sure how this ended up on my TBR list. I'd guess the film but I haven't seen it, although this is often how I end up adding random books, so I shouldn't be surprised. I picked this one up because it was short and I knew I could get through it quickly before my next library book would be available. And it is a quick read, decently written, engaging. Here's the thing though, it's a memoir about absolutely nothing. I don't even know who Lynn Barber is and there was nothing revealed that made me want to know more about her. And from what I can tell, the hoopla made of the movie is only one small chapter of the book, and really didn't seem very consequential. Overall, unless you are interested in Lynn Barber, I can't see why anyone would bother with this book. Side note, she's rather vain and snobbish and from what I can tell, she really had no reason to be. I have no time for vain people.

[Dominika · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ezt a könyvet már régóta megakartam szerezni, de úgy látszik a könyvtár előbb gördítette az utamba! A filmet láttam rengetegszer, egyik kedvencem is, ezért gondoltam ez egy tökéletes történet, tökéletes karakterekkel megfűszerezett könyv! A könyv eleje úgy telt ahogy gondoltam, majd olyan gyorsan át siklották a Simonos részeket, hogy egyszerűen nem tudtam, hogy mi fog történni még! Rájöttem; ez a könyv megtévesztő, mivel az ember azt hinné, hogy hasonlítani fog a filmre, de nem. Ez egy életrajzi mű, ami Lynn Barber életéről szól. Nehéz volt elfogadnom, hogy nem lesz benne több Simon, sem Helen, de úgy érzem a végére megszerettem Lynnt!
Úgy érzem, hogy sok a közös bennem és Lynnben, lehet azért mert Ő is szeret írni, szeret utazni és még személyiségünk pár darabjai is hasonlítanak egymásra! Egyszerűen csak bámultam, ahogy megnyílt előttem az élete, hogy mennyi helyen dolgozott, merre járt, megpróbálta az életét úgy élni, ahogy mindig is elképzelte! Nagyon tisztelem e miatt!
Simon, nem tudom miért, de nekem szimpatikus volt, hiába tudhatjuk róla, hogy egy hazudozó volt, plusz egy kissé pedofil is. Valamiért megfogott a jelleme, elegáns, nem idegesítő karakter (vagyis élő személy). Még így könyv olvasás után is elgondolkozom rajta, hogy mi lehet vele, bár szerintem meghalhatott már. David, az elején úgy gondoltam, ha Lynn bele tudott szeretni, akkor én miért is ne? Kellemes, nyugodt, művészlélek ember volt, akinek küzdelmes élete volt az utolsó éveiben! Az "Utóirat" részben a végén nagyon meglepődtem, szinte majd megállt a szívem, hogy halála után jött rá Lynn, hogy megcsalta Őt. Teljesen sokkolt ez az egész. Egyből el is gondolkodtam, hogy az ember hogy tud megbízni egy másik emberben és leélni vele a fél életét. Ám pár mondattal a végén rájöttünk, hogy ez nem így történt, bár azért homályos a dolog. Ezt azért még jobban kifejtettem volna!
Összességében ez egy olyan életrajzi mű, ahol nincs semmi cicoma, se kiszínesített részek, csak a puszta igazság, ami számomra nagyon imponált!

[Ash · Rating 5 out of 5]

"As I've said before, I'm a deep believer in the unknowability of other people. "
- Lynn Barber

If I ever become famous or do something worth a damn, I want to be interviewed by Lynn Barber. Why? Because she's freaking amazing. I have been in a Carey Mulligan kick lately. I was lead back to the movie that got her on the Hollywood radar, An Education.

Once I found out it was based off Barber's book, I knew I had to read it before I watched the movie. In An Education, Barber discusses her life growing up in 1960s England, getting on an older gentleman's named Simon radar, expanding her journalism qualifications, becoming a wife and mother, and dealing with a heartbreaking loss.

An Education really surprised me. I'm in love with Barber's prose. She's hilarious, concise, unapologetic and sarcastic. She gave zero f**ks about what people thought about her career at Penthouse. She went after what she wanted.

What really surprised me was her relationship with Simon. Originally, I thought it was going to be some lovey dovey forlorn treatise on how a 16 year old was gravelly manipulated by man in his 30s. Instead, Barber didn't let herself get taken with Simon himself but the lifestyle.

The real victims were her parents. When Simon proposed to Barber, she thought it was madness as she wanted to go to Oxford but her parents were all for her forsaking school in order to become Simon's wife. Barber was completely baffled and felt betrayed by them. The two people who are supposed to protect her and keep her safe.

After finding out the truth about Simon and going their separate ways, Barber considered this whole situation her education. The aforementioned quote was born. Barber has written another book and I'm so going to read it!

[Burcu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ödüllü yazar Lynn Barber'in kendi hayatını anlattığı Aşk Dersi, içerisin de çıkaracağınız harika ötesi dersler olan müthiş bir kitap!

Zaten ödüllü bir gazeteci olduğu için kalemi o kadar güçlü ve güzel ki içerisindeki olaylar ne kadar üzücü ve trajik olursa olsun okurken keyif veriyor size. Yazarın samimi tavrı, hatalarını hiç acımadan eleştirmesi, araya serpiştirdiği geçmişine dönük pişmanlıklarını aktarış şekli hatta son cümlesi, kitabın her şeyi büyüledi beni.

16 yaşında yaşamış olduğu yasak ilişkisinin inançlarını, geleceğini, düşüncelerini en önemlisi karakterini nasıl değiştirdiğini öyle güzel ve açık bir şekil de aktarıyor ki yaptığı hatalara rağmen onu sevmeden yapamadım. Karakterine aşık oldum her şeyi kabullenişi hiç bir şeyi saklamayışı...

Şimdiye kadar okuduğum en iyi otobiyografiydi. Mutlaka okuyun size çok şey katacak harika bir kitap.

[Eden · Rating 2 out of 5]

(the film is better) blasphemy!!! shush eden!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Ana · Rating 5 out of 5]

WARNING: DO NOT WATCH THE MOVIE BEFORE READING THIS BOOK. Despite the fact that the movie only dramatises (yes with an S and not with a Z) one chapter of this book, the viewer may be intrigued to know what a tragic mess that poor naive teenage girl made of the rest of her life. Or something else that's equally as far-fetched as that assumption. In reality, any assumptions made about Lynn Barber are NOT TRUE. I loved her memoir. Absolutely loved it. It doesn't even come close to fathomable that the rest of the book is boring compared to her tryst with an older man. In fact, in the movie the older con seems dashing and daring, in the book he seems feeble and puny. Anyway, back to the rest of the memoir. This isn't your typical over the top "look at how lame my life was and I how survived it" memoir. Lynn Barber has an affair with a man she barely asks questions about because she's your typical clever know-it-all school girl in an existential phase. And she blames Albert Camus to top it all off. The rest of her life focuses on her triumphs. She actually led a pretty happy and stable life. She doesn't go into deep detail about the turmoils of her 30 year marriage, but she did say there were some bad parts. But of course every marriage has turmoils. She doesn't go into detail about insecurities or petty rubbish (ha ha), but keeps it short and sweet. She isn't your typical clever girl who talks about how her sheer brilliance is what got her success. She basically talks about getting TO success. Not knowing what happiness is, till she finds it. She's worked for penthouse, she's written sex manuals, she's been happily married and raised KIDS. She's like Carey Bradshaw without being single and unhappy for 40 odd years of her life. I think this book was funny, clever, and totally unexpected. I didn't care to know more about her life, and I loved her journalistic style of writing. It's somewhat refreshing to read after reading so many horrid (ha ha) and terribly dry memoirs. The woman is like, a pioneer without even ever trying to be one! I say read this and be inspired to be a little selfish (but not too much) and to learn a few things about the cleverness of a naughty school girl. The woman has lived her life unconventionally from the start and she fits not in one single category. Which is what I love about this memoir. Of course if you're looking for some sap story, you should go read something about incest or drugs or poverty. You're not going to find it in this book.

[Liralen · Rating 3 out of 5]

For all that the cover copy is entirely about the ill-fated (and ill-advised) relationship Barber had with an older man when she was a teenager, the book is...not really about that. Oh, it's a chapter in her life (and the book), but it's neither the most important nor the most interesting chapter. I'm sure it informed the way she approached things going forwards, but...well, 'younger girl scammed by older man' is not a new story, or an unusual one.

(I do want to see the movie now, though. Carey Mulligan and Emma Thompson are too fantastic for me to resist.)

At any rate, the book wanders through Barber's life, lingering on periods such as the time she spent working for Penthouse. That was perhaps the most compelling portion of the book for me, highlighting as it does not just the job but also the job within the time period. It's an entertaining book—funny and self-aware—though I would have loved it to slow down and spin things out more gradually...done differently, the relationship with the 'con man' could have been an entire book; so too could the period Barber spent at Penthouse. I especially wanted some kind of follow-up with Simon (the con man)—this isn't the sort of book that's heavy on research, but that definitely might have been somewhere for the publisher and author to do some digging!

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this memoir: it is a reminder that the most well-written or instructive memoirs are not always the ones written by "famous" people. I only picked up An Education because I LOVED the movie starring Carey Mulligan and Peter Saarsgard; although I was displeased at first that the plot of the movie is confined to perhaps only the first 30 or so pages of the book, the rest of the memoir is wonderful as well. It's a pleasure to read not only Lynn's great love story with her late husband, but to read about her ascent in her journalism career ('70s to present). I see Lynn Barber as a new mentor of sorts. Highly, highly recommended.

[CaitlynK · Rating 3 out of 5]

I came, we'll say fashionably, late to Nick Hornby's film adaptation of An Education. I've never been able to muster much sympathy for modern older male/teenaged female relationships (with one notable exception, featuring a girl with a fake I.D. and a relationship that was well underway before her real age came to light), so despite the almost cultish following the film has, I went about avoiding it.

Curiosity got the better of me last month, and then the pull of Oxford sent me on a hunt for Lynn Barber's own account. (The hunt actually proved to be difficult: one store told me they couldn't even order it in from the English publisher, inquiries at second-hand shops dead-ended, and I had to settle for the practical, but unadventurous, option of a third-party Amazon seller.)

The author's time at Oxford was covered in a single chapter, leaving me a bit disgruntled (where can I find personal accounts of Oxford students? In the memoir vein, as opposed to biography. There's got to be a list somewhere). Her infamous run-in with Simon is also only a chapter long, leaving most of the book uncharted territory.

To call it light reading would be misleading, but Barber's wry, dry style does lend itself to readability (this took only an afternoon and an evening to finish), but the subject matter does not tend toward the fluffy. Perhaps the result of a journalistic attempt to annihilate any trace of sentimentalism, I did find the book to be rather bloodless, with the exception of the very end, which continued to be brutally straightforward but also gave more of a feel for Barber as a person.

Barber as a person did seem to be generally lacking from the book, somehow left on the sidelines even as events in her life, and her participation in them, unravel. One gets a good sense of her authorial presence, rift with humor and a definite idea of how to live, but, in the end, things don't often tally up. For instance, she claims multiple times that she was constantly exerting effort to keep from being bored, but her relationship with Simon goes on for two years, despite her apparent apathy toward him (and her stated reasons for this, including her parents' enthusiasm and her own love of Simon's friends, are never explored enough to be convincing). I spent two-hundred pages with the woman, but only the last twenty made me feel as though I knew anything much about her.

Overall, this wasn't quite what I was looking for, but I do intend to ferret out Barber's earlier Granta piece (the framework for the movie), with hopes of a glimpse of Oxford. And, frankly, to see if her presentation of the encounter with Simon changed any, once Hornby's version was out in the world, giving people a very different view of things.

[Rachel Stevenson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The relationship with the spiv that spawned the film is covered in 26 pages in this memoir, the rest of the book is Lynn Barber's childhood in Surrey, her youth at Oxford, her career in journalism and her husband's illness, although I suspect 99% of people reading this will have acquired the book after watching the film. Barber is a sparky, if boastful writer (we get it Lynn, you have both brains and beauty) and her childhood as a nouveau entrant into the middle class, especially her mother's job as an elocution teacher and desire to get her daughter into acting (watch out for a small cameo by Jane Asher, stealing Barber's thunder) is entertaining, as are the gossipy bits about celebrities of yesteryear (Sir Ralph Richardson, Sandie Shaw, Robert Robinson, Alan Whicker), but the baby boomer reaction to her parents' depression-era parsimony is a bit more clichéd and whilst the death of a loved one is always a terrible thing, it doesn't make it particularly interesting to the reading public.

It’s probably a good job she had the relationship – which was effectively grooming and stalking – with Simon (actually Alan Green, now deceased), as the rest of her life has been charmed and that makes for a boring memoir. Whenever a flat or a job is needed, there’s an ex-Oxford or Eton person to offer her and her husband pretty much whatever they want. She is a happy in her career and being a wife and mother, there’s no divorce, offspring problems, or - the scourge of women who married in the 60s or 70s – realising that their husband is a male chauvinist pig and leaving him to join a women’s commune. Mr Barber (David Cardiff) does the cooking and house décor and the only problem, until his fatal illness, is that he’s “scared of working class people.” (The poor, poor lamb).

[a.d. · Rating 3 out of 5]

a matter-of-factly, post-war english prose; witty, quick, and provoking.

a rather fascinating tale which, granted, to 2021 may not seem that fascinating at all; nevertheless, i found it enjoyable and also in it a few tips on writing which may come in handy when i sit down to write myself. but perhaps because i saw the film before i read this, or perhaps this really is the case (and of course, this is in no manner an attempt at dissuading prospective readers), i must confess i found the film – for the lack of a better word – well, better. and yes, while this may appear as laziness on my part, to even try and compare those two different mediums, i could nonetheless not shake off the memory of the film, of carey mulligan blushing, in love, defiant, confused, enraged, and finally accepting, that i went back and saw the film again the moment i was finished reading.

so, that's that.

this is definitely a work of an accomplished writer – i do not wish to be misconstrued – but my responses to reading it were sometimes mere shadows and lingering wafts of another rainy and cooler palette.

[Jazz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love this movie and after a recent rewatch was excited to read the memoir it's based on. However, the relationship that inspired the movie and constitutes the majority of the blurb for the book only takes up about 20 pages at the beginning. So while I liked Lynn, and thought this was a well-written memoir, I wasn't interested enough in hearing about her whole life and felt this didn't deliver what it said it would. It also isn't immediately clear about how the relationship affected the rest of her life until one line at the end that felt like an afterthought.

[Maia Coelho · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a boring memoir! Was an interesting start with a 16 year old being courted by an older man and I thought the story would revolve around this but then she just moved on to recounting her pretty uninteresting life!! And pretending it was all linked to her brief affair with this older man despite the links being very tenuous. Would not recommend.

[Sophie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lynn Barber has lead a really interesting and unpredictable life. She's met incredible people, been incredibly successful, seen great changes in print media, travelled. And yet her memoir was- not captivating. Also, misleading. Very little of it is actually about what happened when she was 16

[Clara Mundy · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.25/5