Jaclyn’s Review: Educated by Tara Westover

Educated
written by Tara Westover
published by Random House, 2018

find it here: (affiliate links) Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Apple Books, Target, Walmart, Kobo, Book Depository, Goodreads

Did I enjoy this book? I absolutely could not put this book down. If I’m being honest, it was similar to watching a train wreck, and I just couldn’t stop. The situations the author lived through, what she described family members living through, I had to keep reading just to see if everyone would survive!! This book was fascinating to read in a “do people really love like this?!?” kind of way. That being said, this book was also deeply unsettling. At first I thought this was because of the intense emotional, psychological, and physical abuse the author received at the hands of her family. I’ve read psychological thrillers and horror novels, so I wonder if I was more upset because the author is describing true events, not works of fiction. In the second half of the book, I became more upset with the focus on religion (the family is devoutly Mormon) and its excuse for these terrible behaviors. Finally, I struggled with the idea that the author had never set foot in a classroom of any sorts but was able to teach herself trigonometry in a month, simply from reading a book. Then she studied for a month and passed the ACT, got accepted to BYU, not only passed all of her classes but maintained a GPA high enough to warrant scholarships and study opportunities at Cambridge. She then won a prestigious Gates Scholarship and earned both a masters and doctorate from Cambridge. If this weren’t implausible enough, this highly educated woman continued to return to her family home, at least annually, to suffer emotional abuse and threats of physical harm just to try to maintain the relationships. Overall, the book was an interesting read, but it is difficult to believe as complete nonfiction.
 

 

Would I recommend it? I did enjoy reading it, so I would recommend it. The scenes of physical and psychological violence can be a bit intense, so I would recommend caution if these are triggers for you.
 

 

About the book – from Goodreads: Tara Westover was 17 the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her “head-for-the-hills bag”. In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father’s junkyard.

Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent.

Then, lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself. She taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University, where she studied history, learning for the first time about important world events like the Holocaust and the civil rights movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home.

Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty and of the grief that comes with severing the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one’s life through new eyes and the will to change it.

 

 
 

* This post contains affiliate links.

** This post first appeared on Every Free Chance Books (everyfreechance.com) on September 30, 2019.