As I'm pretty much Lynn Barber's age, as I used to enjoy her interviews in the Observer, and as we both lived our pre-university lives in London, I thought this would be a book to savour.

Well, I dunno really. I whisked through it: it's a quick and easy read. Her teenage years were very different from my own, but after she'd described her childhood and That Teenage Adventure, the book settled down into giving a resume of her career. We learn little of Lynn the wife, Lynn the mother, Lynn the friend or neighbour, and all the other characters in the book, however central to her life, remain hazy. This book is about Lynn the journalist and author. Which is fine, but I wasn't particularly engaged.

Still, it's a short book, and soon over.

One for the charity shop pile. ( )

I read it fully unto the An Education chapter then skipped about as a found parts of it interesting. It was definitely worth reading the An Education section to see where the story started and how they grew it into a great movie. The chapter about the start up of Penthouse Magazine was also pretty interesting. My take, worth borrowing but definitely not worth buying. ( )

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 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] ( )

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 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. ( )

Great memoir of English time period ( )