Educated by Tara Westover
- Publisher: Random House, 2018
- Genre: Biography
- Format: Paperback / eARC
- Page Count: 329 pages
- My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5/5)
CW: misogyny, gaslighting, violence, psychological & physical & spiritual abuse, child abuse, use of N-word by family member
I have to thank Westover for writing this memoir. It must have taken her a lot of courage to relive everything and share her own life story with the world.
Educated is an unsettling read. It is difficult to believe that everything in the book had happened within the past 35 years. If there were a single antagonist to Westover’s protagonist, it would have been her father. But she wrote this memoir candidly and without blame, so the book was not an aggressive rant, but rather like a novel with a reliable narrator. The sense of rote was also probably because getting emotional would have made the writing process unbearable. She did not fault anyone or religion nor get angry, but is accepting of her past and moves on.
To a small degree, I understand how the worldview of family greatly impacts your own when you stay ignorant of the world. I can only imagine how confused she must have felt growing up and entering higher education. But since then, Westover had found her way and is an unwavering force. Her writings delivered dramatic presentations and life so far has been both heartbreaking and liberating.
“Don’t you teach your children to wash after they use the toilet?” Grandma said. Dad […] said, “I teach them not to piss on their hands.”
All Westovers are technically unkillable even after the accidents of Tyler driving overnight, Luke catching fire, and the many many more that followed. These miraculous recoveries were very much like fiction, but I guess they were lucky.
I love Tara’s older brother Tyler. As a teen, he read a lot and bought math textbooks to study calculus. I love that he and Tara are always close. With the family’s distrust of public education, it took Tyler immense resolution to break free and I silently thank him for that.
“There’s a world out there, Tara,” [Tyler] said. “And it will look a lot different once Dad is no longer whispering his view of it in your ear.”
Though her family’s memories didn’t agree on many past events, it did not take anything away from the memoir. I think their childhood pain had them shut down, and that had resulted in the memory gaps. There were obvious attempts of lying to self throughout Westover’s life as well.
My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs.
Educated is intense and at times horrifying. I would have called it a thrilling read if it weren’t Westover’s real life. Even if you do not believe that the events taken place over the course of Westover’s youth were true, I still encourage you to read Educated because it makes you rethink your own life. Read it as fiction, and it is just as good; read it as non-fiction, and it is life-changing. [31 Oct 2019]
I received an e-ARC from Random House via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
