Product Description
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 and offered her a ride. It was an encounter that would change her life. Her parents were as infatuated with “Simon”—the name she gives him in the book—as the adolescent Barber was,… More >>
#1 by Caraculiambro on January 21, 2010 - 3:50 pm
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. I was a little leery doing so, since, as I’d never heard of Lynn Barber before then, I was dreading a biography that would go on and on about a person I knew nothing of.
Mercifully, however, Lynn Barber’s “An Education” is a swift read: 182 pages that can probably be finished in an afternoon.
So who is Lynn Barber? In brief, a British journalist who’s famous for controversial interviews. In the 70’s, she worked at Penthouse, which at the time was quite the louche thing for a Oxford-educated lady to do.
The reason this book is getting a bunch of press is that its third chapter, “An Education,” has been turned into a movie starring Carey Mulligan, with a script written by the much-praised Nick Hornby. That’s also the excerpt I read in the Guardian, and yow, is it fantastic. Here’s a paragraph:
“But there were other lessons Simon taught me that I regret learning. I learned not to trust people; I learned not to believe what they say but to watch what they do; I learned to suspect that anyone and everyone is capable of ‘living a lie’. I cam to believe that other people — even when you think you know them well — are ultimately unknowable. Learning all this was a good basis for my subsequent career as an interviewer, but not, I think, for life. It made me too wary, too cautious, too ungiving. I was damaged by my education.” (pp. 55-56)
As for the rest of it, I found it pretty forgettable. Part of the problem is that, since I’m not British, I’m lost with all of the Fleet Street name-dropping. Whatever effect it was intended to have is lost on me. Here’s a sample of what I’m talking about:
“. . . . so I assembled a good backlog of interviews for Stephen Glover to choose from. In the very first issue he ran an interview I did with John Aspinall in which – I always believe – Aspinall admitted to having seen Lord Lucan after he murdered his nanny.” (p. 133)
Other than third chapter, the only other part of the book that I felt was worthwhile was the end, where Ms. Barber finds that her youngish husband of thirty years is unexpectedly dying of a rare disease. She really put her heart on the page in those final pages, and it shows.
As for the impression you get about the life Barber has achieved, it seems like it doesn’t sum to much. As quoted above, she blames her relationship with Simon for her being ungiving, but she struck me as just another typical baby boomer. Her life was one series of self-indulgent antics after another, and, though she does mention her kids, she doesn’t seem too interested in them. Seems like her whole life has been more about getting rather than giving. Sadly, the author, now about 65, has apparently yet to realize this.
Quotes that creep the reader out are frequent. Here’s one:
“I probably slept with about fifty men in my second year [at Oxford]. My fantasy in those days was to meet a stranger, exchange almost no words, jump into bed, and then talk afterwards.” (p. 67)
In short, a poorly lived life.
Rating: 3 / 5
#2 by Drimble Wedge on January 21, 2010 - 6:26 pm
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.
Rating: 4 / 5
#3 by Anne Salazar on January 21, 2010 - 8:44 pm
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.
Rating: 5 / 5