An Education

Pretty good, for a memoir. I related to Lynn a lot. I enjoyed the way that her life seemed perfectly normal to her, but she realized later (from other people) that maybe it wasn't. Her stories and the way she told them were interesting and engaging, but not vulgar or unrealistic. She behaved like a perfectly normal person. For example, she worked as an editor at Penthouse but spent most of her time aruging with another editor about Oxford commas and -ize vs. -ise. She wrote two books about sex, but it's not some kind of risque secret, it's just what she did. I especially enjoyed how she kind of semi-stalked her now-husband when they first met. Even though memoirs are still not my thing, It was nice to read one by someone I actually show more respect, for a change. show less

This was utterly fantastic. An Education is a wonderful memoir written by Lynn Barber, a journalist whose career led her to interesting people and places, and whose family led her to many important revelations about life and love. Chiefly, this memoir has gained recognition for the role it played as the jumping-off-point for Nick Hornby's screenplay for the film, An Education, but it deserves a great deal of fuss simply based on its own merit. Do not think that the movie encompasses the entire memoir -- the film is based on a single chapter from Barber's life involving a relationship with an older man while she prepared to attend university. I admit that I saw the movie first, loved it, and became interested in reading the memoir as a show more result of that, but when a friend (a journalist who bears a striking resemblance to Carey Mulligan) praised the memoir with such enthusiasm, I knew it would be lovely. I did, however, make the mistake of starting to read this in the evening before bed... and then I looked up to find it was after 2am. This could very easily be a single-sitting read and I already have great plans to give this volume as a gift to several witty and intelligent women in my acquaintance. In my discussion of the book below, I might inadvertently give something away, but when it's a memoir, one can hardly call it a "spoiler." Besides, if you're reading this memoir, you should be reading it for the wonderful style of storytelling.

I suppose one can point to her background in journalism for the fact that Barber was able to write such a short memoir with such substantial content and detail. She's able to focus in on the parts of her life that she feels are important without rambling... and without giving the impression that she's skipping anything as a means of glazing over it. She leaves the reader wanting more -- a true accomplishment, indeed, for a memoir. She quickly goes through her childhood and parents, pausing for some lengthier focus on her first significant relationship with an older man named Simon. Quite the charmer, he even wins over her parents with ease, never pushing Barber into anything and yet still making her feel like she was in his debt for first exposing her to the finer things in life. It helps that she also adores his glamorous friends, too. So she ignores his shady business deals and accepts the lack of information she receives about him, submitting to his infantile pet names and handing over her virginity when she reaches seventeen. When Simon proposes and her parents are delighted, noting that now she need not go to university, Barber feels betrayed by what feels like wasted years of education if this is all they wanted for her. What was the point of instilling such a respect for education and learning if she was going to make them just as happy by getting married? Ultimately, Simon turns out to be married already and even though Barber had to leave her school because of the engagement (coincidentally, at her school, they also believed there was no need for her to be both engaged and sitting for exams to enter university), she ultimately succeeds in her parents' original goal of having her attend Oxford University, but not without some cost... "an education," indeed.

Once at Oxford, she embarks upon a hedonistic lifestyle, determined to do the minimal amount of work at school in favor of learning other things from life... which seems to be working decently well for her until she meets the man that she knows is The One from first glance. After finagling herself into sharing a house with him, she and David quickly become an item and eventually get married, having two daughters and creating a non-traditional but quite functional marriage. Details of her marriage and family life are pushed aside for discussion of her career, which one assumes was true in the living of the experience as well as the re-telling. Barber begins her career by proofreading and writing for Penthouse and despite many people asking if she was ashamed of working for a soft-core porn publication, Barber insists that she's quite proud of the experience and indebted to the people she worked with for showing her the ropes of the industry (publishing/journalism, not porn), allowing her to be part of a small publication and thus experience many different perspectives. Ultimately, she moved on to more mainstream journalism, but also penned two books that offered sex advice to women at a time when many such publications were focused a bit more on seductive undressing and married couples communing with each other.

Her memoir covers her wide and varied career in journalism, relating just the perfect amount of witty stories to the point where one wishes there were more. She also discusses her brief experience as a stay-at-home mother and ultimately the narrative shifts to focus a great deal on her husband, whose health declines towards the end of the memoir. The book closes with his death and her coming to grips with her altered reality, touching upon the question as to whether we ever entirely know someone or if we can spend a lifetime with them and still remain a stranger. For Barber, this question comes up when she receives a photograph of David and believes that he must have been in love with the woman who look the picture -- instead of being furious at the idea of her deceased husband's wandering, she experiences a kind of relief for never being home enough or being a good enough wife. Ultimately, though, she comes to believe she was wrong about the question of David having an affair (at least with this particular photograph-taker) and Barber allows the reader to feel mixed emotions with this -- no doubt, the mixed emotions that she, herself, shared.

While the story of Lynn Barber's life to date makes for a great read, its her writing style and her own charm that are the truly appealing points to this memoir. With a reputation for being a savage writer, it should come as no shock that her parents are not treated kid gloves, but then, she herself is subjected to the same treatment. She frankly offers up the fact that she is not at all what most people expect when they meet her, citing her elocution accent as her worst attribute. Her rise within the field is something she rather attributes to chance, but one can see that her writing style is extraordinary. She really gets to the heart of matters, be in analysis of someone else or herself. In the closing chapters surrounding her husband, she is honest in her own feelings of distaste at lingering at David's side in hospitals, opting not to paint herself as a dutiful pillar of wifely devotion. She also brings David under scrutiny, but at last one can see that she's being somewhat delicate there; clearly there was a great amount of love between the two, whatever other problems might have cropped up.

Life is very real the way that Barber depicts it, without any attempt to dress it up or make false claims to spare the "innocent." People can become hypocrites without realizing it; time marches mercilessly on and somehow a loved one can grow old all of a sudden; money cannot solve everything and perhaps one would be happier without it. She's clearly had a very interesting career and I'm only sorry that it took a movie of her novel to bring her work to my attention. She certainly can stand as a bit of a mentor to any young journalists out there, even if the industry is always changing... her lessons on sticking to her own style and seeking out interesting colleagues are certainly timeless. The movie is a very different experience from the book, though a delight in its own right. I can't imagine a similar circumstance where I was as pleased with both book and movie but for very different reasons. That said, don't let the movie stand as a substitute -- this memoir is truly a gem. show less

Lynn Barber's memoir is a short, enjoyable read, which is delightfully candid about everything that happened to her.

At 16 she had an affair with a much older man, and this part of the book has had quite a lot of press coverage, but I found the rest of the book just as interesting, perhaps more so. She starts with an account of how her elocution teacher mother pushed her into a way of speaking which she has never felt comfortable with and tried to encourage her into an acting career. Bizarrely, Barber's parents never discouraged her affair with dodgy older man Simon, in fact they positively encouraged it and were thrilled when she announced she was going to marry him. What were they thinking of?

Barber had a lot of fun as a university show more student and a journalist, and there are lots of entertaining anecdotes about a career which included several years working for Penthouse. I'm no great fan of pornography, but still found this engaging to read. Then she moved into newspaper and magazine journalism.

The final part of the memoir is a bit darker in tone, as it describes quite sad events in her personal life.

The appeal of this book is in Barber's wit and honesty, and her writing skill as a feature journalist. show less

I’d already seen and liked the film adaptation of An Education, but was interested to find out that the episode focused on by the film (Lynne Barber’s teenage affair with a middle-aged con man and the strange way her parents encouraged the relationship) is only one chapter of the book. Her childhood, her career as a writer, her time at Oxford University and her relationship with her husband are also covered, all in a very witty style. What makes the book so entertaining is Lynne Barber’s personality, her writing voice, and her insight into people, which also made her such a successful interviewer. One thing I found interesting is that she dislikes her speaking voice, the elocution-lesson accent she acquired in childhood and her show more tendency to waffle, and feels that her writing expresses her true self far better. She is definitely very honest, both about herself and about her opinions of other people. If an author is completely candid, it makes an autobiography much more compelling, and An Education is definitely the kind of page-turner you can read in one sitting. [2011] show less

It's hard to know what to say about this one. Well, first off - I read this because I loved the film, but I was not expecting the whole of that particular story to be polished off in about twenty pages! Definitely a case of the film being better than the book in that regard, then. As for the rest, this is a slim autobiography that could have been bigger and bolder but seems to leave much unsaid. For example - the Nick Nolte fiasco. Barber was sent to interview him, but despite what Barber felt afterwards (that the interview went fine), Nolte was so enraged that he refused to have his photo taken. And what do we learn about the whole incident in this autobiography? Practically nothing. And that's the biggest issue here - there isn't very show more much meat on the bones. I enjoyed what there was of this book - Barber is clearly a highly competent writer - but by the end I began to wonder if a biography wouldn't have worked better. show less

This book was not quite what I expected:- The story, as advertised on the cover, only takes up one chapter of the book. But the book is in fact a memoir of Lynn's entire life.

A lonely childhood is followed by a bizarre relationship with an older man in her teens. Then follows a couple of years 'learning about men' at Oxford (made me wonder about Oxford?). She meets the man of her life. They start off in a derelict house in Stockwell and gradually move up the London property ladder. She commences her career as a journalist at Penthouse magazine when it was itself merely a startup. She writes books:- a sex guide and another about natural history in Victorian times. (The former more commercially successful than the latter). She works for show more various newspapers and magazines, finding her niche as an interviewer and wins journalism awards. In the mean time she has a successful marriage with a man she adores and they have 2 beautiful children. So in short: A real-life Chic-Lit story!

I liked how she appears to write frankly and honestly about herself. Even though she says right at the start of the book that she isn't very good at remembering things. show less

Not what I expected, and in some ways, not much of a memoir. Barber's account flies through her life, scarcely bothering to try to provide much in the way of detail. Nevertheless, she writes so elegantly and effortlessly that I think I would have been disappointed had she lingered more closely on the nitty-gritty of her existence. It's her character, rather than her biography, that the reader is left with. The book is thoroughly charming, and it's hard not to think that the same applies to the author.