Full marks for trying

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Brigid Keenan was never destined to lead a normal life. From her early beginnings--a colorful childhood in India brought to an abrupt end by Independence and Partition, then a return to dreary postwar England and on to a finishing school in Paris with daughters of presidents and princes--ordinary just wasn't for her. When, as a ten-year-old, she overheard her mother describe her as "desperately plain," she decided then and there that she had to rely on something different: glamour, eccentricity, character, a career--anything, so as not to end up at the bottom of the pile. And in classic Brigid style, she somehow ended up with them all.

Fate often gave Brigid a helping hand: in the late fifties, in her teens, she landed a job as an assistant at the Daily Express in London, and by the tender age of twenty-one she was a fashion editor at the Sunday Times . It was the dawn of the swinging sixties, and London was the place to be. Brigid teamed up with David Bailey and Jean Shrimpton, chatted with Vidal Sassoon, drove around London in a minivan, covered the Paris Collections and was labeled a "Young Meteor" by the press. Though she was always trying to do her best, sometimes her enthusiasm--and naïveté--led to a succession of hilarious misadventures, like the time she turned up to report on the Vietnam war wearing a miniskirt . . .

Candid and wickedly funny, Full Marks for Trying is a coming-of-age memoir that will delight, entertain, and make you cry with laughter.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

In this breezy memoir, fashion editor Keenan (Diplomatic Baggage) details her early childhood in India in the waning years of the British Raj, and then coming of age in postwar England and becoming a journalist in 1960s London. With her father, an Englishman, stationed in India, Keenan and her two sisters grew up in Ambala, considering it "home." It certainly felt more like home than drab London with its food rations and general restrictions. They returned to England in 1948, when Keenan was eight. She details a colorful childhood full of make-believe games (and looking out for snakes) with cousins, followed by finishing school in Paris. Soon she was on her way to working in the fashion world as a writer, though women were seen as qualified only for secretarial work. After enduring menial typing jobs, she found a position as a fashion assistant at the Daily Express, which was the cutting-edge newspaper at the time. She moved on to a similar position at the Sunday Times (where her sister worked), an experience she likens to The Devil Wears Prada, and in 1961, at 21, she became the Times's young fashion editor, an enviable post that brought her into the orbit of fashion icons such as Jean Shrimpton and Vidal Sassoon. Keenan's witty, touching reminiscences about her early life will please more than just fashion fans. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

To understand Keenan's life as a fashion journalist, just change the setting of The Devil Wears Prada to 1960s London. Identified as a young meteor in the fashion world, Keenan found herself in charge of a fashion page at a newspaper at the age of 21. She fell into her career more than anything, which she recounts here with verve along with an equally energetic narrative of her childhood in India during the final years of the Raj. Certain aspects of her life growing up in the 1950s and as a young woman in the 1960s, from hair curlers to straightening the seams of her stockings, will be familiar to readers of a certain age. But other parts of her story riding elephants as a girl or rushing madly to put together a feature on what the queen would be wearing if she lived in Paris manage to be both glamorous and firmly grounded in reality. Endearingly naive, amusingly candid, Keenan deserves full marks for her work.--Thoreson, Bridget Copyright 2016 Booklist