Reviews for An Education

The average rating for An Education based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-06-26 00:00:00 William Bretag 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.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-05-30 00:00:00 Matt Semak 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