An Education

Lynn Barber

Carolyn Seymour (Narrator)

02-16-10

4hrs 46min

Abridgement

Unabridged

Genre

Nonfiction/Biography & Autobiography

As low as $0.00
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02-16-10

4hrs 46min

Abridgement

Unabridged

Genre

Nonfiction/Biography & Autobiography

Description

“[Barber’s] a suburban girl who’s frightened that she’s going to get cut out of everything good that happens in the city. That, to me, is a big story in popular culture. It’s the story of pretty much every rock ’n’ roll band.” Nick Hornby, author of the screenplay adaptation of An Education

When Lynn Barber was sixteen, a stranger in a maroon sports car pulled up beside her as she was on her way home from school and offered her a ride. It was the beginning of a long journey from innocence to a precocious experience—an affair with an older man that would change her life. Barber's seducer left her with a taste for luxury hotels, posh restaurants and trips abroad—expensive habits that she managed to support in later life as a successful London journalist whose barbed interviews both terrorized and fascinated her smart-set subjects.

A poignant, shockingly candid account of the stages in a literary life—from promiscuity at Oxford to a stint at Penthouse to a complex marriage that endured—An Education is a classic of English memoir.

Praise

“[Barber’s] a suburban girl who’s frightened that she’s going to get cut out of everything good that happens in the city. That, to me, is a big story in popular culture. It’s the story of pretty much every rock ’n’ roll band.” Nick Hornby, author of the screenplay adaptation of An Education

“Candid, unsentimental and extremely funny. I read it in one glorious go, laughing and crying throughout.” Zoë Heller, novelist and journalist

“Barber’s voice is of course hugely confident—sometimes grumpy, often a bit snooty, very often funny and always extremely frank. Take this to the beach and be grateful for feminism.” Scotsman (Edinburgh)

“An absolutely marvelous read.  The only thing wrong with it is that it is too short.” Spectator

“This book shares all of Barber’s best journalistic traits: it’s thrillingly readable, very light on its feet and you’ll want to finish it in one sitting.” Tatler

“The most riveting memoir you will read this year, comic and tragic by turns. A small masterpiece.” Literary Review

“An insightful, funny and moving personal tale.” Easy Living

“Few pieces of journalism have been more riveting than the hatchet jobs Lynn Barber used to make of the profiles she wrote for the Independent On Sunday and the Observer. Waiting avidly for the next one, I used to marvel that anyone was fool enough to submit themselves to her merciless examination. And now she has written a book as riveting as the profiles.” Daily Mail (London)

“Magnificent, searing, honest.” Mail on Sunday (London)

“Effortlessly engaging prose.” Times (London)

“Lynn Barber is known for her acerbic features and inteviews, and this memoir is no less candid, fun and down to earth…An Education reads like a gossip over coffee with an irreverent mother in law.” Sunday Times (London)

“An Education confirms Barber as the kind of lovely, thoughtful and outspoken character you’d love to sit next to at a dinner party.” Sunday Express (London)

“Grab the chance to read this entertaining memoir while it’s being republished alongside Nick Hornby’s film adaptation.” Observer (London)

“This pithy account highlights how the encounter coloured the rest of her [Barber’s] life…lightly written yet brutally honest.” Guardian (Manchester)

“Barber’s memoir is funny, bold, incisive, clever and interesting.” Independent (London)

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Details
More Information
Language English
Release Day Feb 15, 2010
Release Date February 16, 2010
Release Date Machine 1266278400
Imprint Blackstone Publishing
Provider Blackstone Publishing
Categories Biographies & Memoirs, Professionals & Academics, Women, Art & Literature, Nonfiction - Adult, Nonfiction - All
Author Bio
Lynn Barber

Lynn Barber studied English at Oxford University. She began her career in journalism at Penthouse and has since worked for a number of major British newspapers and for Vanity Fair. She has won five British Press Awards and has published two volumes of her celebrated interviews, Mostly Men and Demon Barber.

Narrator Bio
Carolyn Seymour

Carolyn Seymour is a voice artist and audiobook narrator. She was born in England and grew up on a farm on the Isle of Wight. Her rather eccentric Russian Irish parents instilled in her a love of reading and a passion for the countryside. She has lived in Los Angeles for the last thirty years, where she putters about in her garden, grows vegetables, entertains her children and friends, and hikes with her three glorious but ancient dogs.

Overview

When Lynn Barber was sixteen, a stranger in a maroon sports car pulled up beside her as she was on her way home from school and offered her a ride. It was the beginning of a long journey from innocence to a precocious experience—an affair with an older man that would change her life. Barber's seducer left her with a taste for luxury hotels, posh restaurants and trips abroad—expensive habits that she managed to support in later life as a successful London journalist whose barbed interviews both terrorized and fascinated her smart-set subjects.

A poignant, shockingly candid account of the stages in a literary life—from promiscuity at Oxford to a stint at Penthouse to a complex marriage that endured—An Education is a classic of English memoir.

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