This is an amazing memoir of one women's accomplishment of gaining an education within a family that didn't value it. She overcame so many obstacles to receive an education. I was truly fascinated by this book. Ms. Westover did a wonderful job writing and sharing her life story with us. I highly recommend it.

Holy. Crap. This book. A heartbreaking look into the human condition, education, and what our parents do to their children.

Wow.

This book just blew me away. Completely.
I am unsure why people have a hard time believing that this is truth. She is open throughout the book about when memories have been helped along and with saying that things quoted are paraphrased and when they are not. Plus, she had freaking DIARIES to help her parse things together. And honestly, HOW does one make up so many things as this? And have several siblings that back her up? And other family members that have also suffered at the hands of her father? SMH.

I have read multiple books on people who are steeped in Fundamentalist Mormonism - both within polygamy and those who are fundamentalists but don't practice polygamy and they are all...crazy is the best word that comes to play. They are almost always suffering from delusions of grandeur and have extremely wild views of government and doctors and "outsiders" in general. Every single thing that Ms. Westover's father suffers from. I have absolutely no trouble believing all that she has put in this book is true.

I am sure that she loves her parent's very much; I get the impression that she misses her mother quite a bit. But she does not miss the drama, the extreme religiosity [WHO calls a 6 year old a whore?] and their inability to see just how dangerous and abusive Shawn is [perhaps when someone dies? Maybe that will wake them up? Somehow I doubt it - I can see them saying it was in God's plan and so it is fine that their son killed someone. How terrifying] and continues to be - she is wise to stay as far away from them as possible. To direct quote her:
“You can love someone and still choose to say goodbye to them,” she says now. “You can miss a person every day, and still be glad that they are no longer in your life.”. I think that says it all.

While this book is difficult at times to read [I am still extremely angry over her parents and especially her mother that turned her back and eye on what was happening to her own children to stay in line with what her husband was teaching and saying it was the truth], this IS an excellent book to read. In my opinion, you will not regret it; I did not, not even once.

WOW! On all levels! This book shows that the affect of mental health on a family is dramatic and long lasting. The innate desire to be educated and to learn is in all of us, even when the circumstances are are pushing against it. The abuse and misguided role models are too much for any child but Westover's strength and perseverance are admirable. To be able to write about such memories so well, is very special.

Title: Educated

Author: Tara Westover



What I liked: The honesty. I was immediately drawn in, and I truly cared about Tara and her family. Plus, it is just really well written.



What I didn't like: Knowing it is a true story made me angry so often. I just want to shake some of these people. That isn't a problem with the book so much as life though.



A lot has already been said about this book. It deserves the hype, it is thoughtful and honest. My biggest problems were that I felt very strongly about the characters and their decisions, which is a great problem to have when reading a book because it means the author has truly rebuilt their world for you.



5/5 stars

Educated by Tara Westover B+
I thought this was very well done. I can't wrap my head around how difficult her life was, how much she had to re-learn, how hard she had to work, and WHY did she keep going back to her family.
Those parents should be locked up. It just makes me angry, really. The lack of medical care is what bothers me the most. It's a memoir that will make you think differently.

Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover stood out to me as it was an interesting premise: a young woman, raised in a survivalist family in Idaho with no formal education, fights her way to college and graduate school to become a historian. This memoir went way beyond that and became a beautiful story of love, loyalty, and self-discovery.

Tara was the youngest of seven children, born to a fundamentalist Mormon family who did not believe in formal education. More than that, her father believed that the End of Days was coming, and he had his family preparing to outlast everyone on their mountain, isolated from neighbors, family, and friends. Their income came from the junkyard on their property, and her father spent hours on end rambling about the evils of the Government (capitalization intentional) and the gentiles, whom he defined as everyone but those who lived their faith according to his principles, including his fellow Mormons. When Tara follows in her brother's footsteps to BYU, she suffers from severe culture shock, and she must find her own place and her own way -- not just that of her father.

This story is incredible, and not just for the sheltered-girl-makes-good story. At its heart, Tara's story is an achievement in self-study that follows her journey from an impressionable child who desperately believes her father's rantings against the evils of the world to an adult who has to find the answers to her questions herself. She has to face her past, which is her family, in the harshest light possible, and she has to make a decision between caring for herself and her own well-being or being a member of her family. It's heartbreaking, and in this story, you watch as her siblings all have to make this decision for themselves. The self-delusion that some family members live in is almost unbelievable, until you realize that we all have people who live in this state even if it is not nearly as extreme as a survivalist mentality. Tara tells of sitting in an undergraduate psychology class and hearing the symptoms for bipolar disorder and realizing that her father is a textbook case. It's not the first time that she begins questioning her upbringing, but it is a defining moment in her relationship with her parents. My heart hurt for her as she laid out her process of coming to grips with the differences between her and those who raised her.

However, even if this story was just about Tara's work to overcome the odds stacked against her, that would have been amazing. Just her ability to be self-sufficient in terms of reviewing for the ACT on her own, and her seeking help with trigonometry from her brother, was amazing. It was enough to make me wonder if I could have that kind of drive. It's mind boggling that her father would give credit to their "home school," as there was next to no schooling that actually took place. Her family was not set up to succeed, from her father's rantings to her mother's capitulation, from their distrust of modern medicine to a fear of paperwork and schooling, Tara's success was just astounding, and the fact that she, along with two of her brothers, earned Ph.D.'s is amazing, and I applaud them. I know how hard this is.

The most important part of Tara's story, to me, was her ability to come to grips with the abuse she suffered as a child and a young adult at the hands of her older brother. She calls him Shawn in this book, and he was incredibly violent to Tara, and later we discover many other girls, over a course of decades. I was expecting sexual abuse to come to light at some point, but that was not the case. He spent his time tormenting his sisters, girlfriends, and desired paramours. It's difficult to read, because you want to scream at the girls in the book to run as fast as they can. When one girl turns to Tara and tells her that God has provided Shawn with the ability to "fix" girls through violence, and that he is annointed, it's shocking. I was taken aback that someone could be so enmeshed in their faith that they would accept predicted violence to be God's will. I know it happens, but reading it so starkly was affecting.

Tara's writing is also lovely. In an interview with Vanity Fair, she writes that she studied short stories to figure out how to write for a general audience, and that she structured her chapters like short stories. The effect was beautiful, and the book was affecting and meaningful. I'm grateful that I was able to be a part of her journey as a reader of her story, and I look forward to hearing what the future offers her.

This review is from a couple perspectives:
As an adult, I thought this book was fabulous! True stories, written in such a lovely narrative style are always an interesting read and move quickly. The fact that this is a true story is still mind-boggling and makes it even more appealing! Fabulous choice for book clubs!

As a high school librarian, I see this book as a wonderful edition to the collection for students to check out but it is not an easy read so I wouldn't universally recommend it. As for use in the classroom, it could fit in to nonfiction studies, especially in something like a book club set up since it is not an easy read.

On one hand, if you've never encountered people like this, you'd have a hard time believing this woman's life story, especially people healing from brain injury and third-degree burns without medical assistance. I've known people like this (from a safe distance, thankfully), but even so, this woman's life story is something to behold, a page-turner I could not put down despite the fact that I felt it could have used more depth.

So much of me was URGING her to seek therapy - SERIOUS therapy - the entire time. And while I understood the reasons she didn't, I cringed every single time she wavered in her dealings with her sociopathic brother or her messed up family. I must admit - we are a minimally-vaxxing, part-time homeschooling, herbal-remedy-using, family (though not fundamentalist Mormon preppers, lol) - so I mostly viewed her "I need my vaccinations" response to be rebellion, not "education" - but again, I understood where she was coming from in that regard.
What was made clear, so clear, was the value in ACTUAL education. All three of the children who left the family not only went to college but saw themselves all the way through PhDs. Huge.

On the other hand - I felt this was a mere clip of the journey - the author very clearly avoided discussing personal relationships outside of her family in any sort of depth, which made me wonder how she was learning to move through that aspect of the modern world as well and (spoiler, a little) - a part of me was a little heartbroken when, in reading the author notes at the end, she referred to Drew as merely a "friend".

Regardless of that - Tara Westover is a beautiful writer, and although I unfortunately can't sync them to Goodreads since I read a NetGalley copy, lots of passages were highlighted. I hope this isn't the only thing we'll see from her. She is a writer I will continue to follow.

I will read anything—absolutely anything—about fundamentalist/survivalists and I absolutely loved this. I found Westover’s story really compelling. My only complaint is that I wanted more of her “after” life and maybe a little bit less of the “before.” She does a fantastic job with the difficult task of making her family members, even the ones she has many reasons to resent, fully three-dimensional.

4.5 stars EDUCATED is the story of Tara Westover a woman who was born into the Mormon faith in Idaho – her domineering father wanted to live off the grid and her mild and meek mother was a midwife/healer. Westover was the youngest of seven and, by the time, she came along, her parents didn’t see the need to send their children to school. One of her brothers encouraged her to study for the SAT and at age 17, she found herself in a classroom for the first time at Brigham Young University. She was woefully unprepared – she’d never heard of Napoleon, the Holocaust, or the Civil Rights Movement, just to name a few – but that didn’t stop this determined young woman. I’m in awe of her and all she achieved and recommend this book to anyone who enjoys memoirs or stories of strong women. The audio version is narrated by Julia Whelan – at first I didn’t think she was the best choice but once I settled into the story, it seemed like she was telling me her own story.

Educated is an incredible, vivid, and at times heart wrenching look into the life of Tara Westover. Her family lives off the grid in Idaho and Tara doesn’t enter a classroom until her freshman year of college. Her story is one of struggle, strength, and perseverance. It’s not for the faint of heart.

This is a spectacular memoir. I tore through it quickly, despite the sometimes harrowing material. I will definitely be recommending this title to patrons.

This book is about a girl who, despite her parents’ lack of support and encouragement for formal education, manages to start her academic journey at the age of seventeen. With perseverance, dedication and help from people outside her tight knit, dysfunctional family, she is rewarded years later with her PhD.

Raised by her fundamentalist parents on a secluded mountain in Buck Peak, Idaho, her childhood was not a typical one. Her family situation was dire, brutal and heartbreaking. Her parents, especially her father, were suspicious of the government and determined to keep their children away from its influence, which included attending school. Their days were spent working in their family's metal scrapyard with shockingly little concern for their safety, but it was the mental abuse and control that her parents wielded over the children, that was the scariest and had the longest lasting effects.

Much of the book focuses on this dysfunctional bond with her family and how it conflicted with her deep-seated desire to educate herself. I'll admit that I found the first third of the book slow, but after that point I had a hard time putting it down. For a book where you already know the outcome going in, I was amazed at how riveted I was by Westover's life, her decisions and her repeated struggles to find out who she is, despite her childhood and family's pressure to conform.

This is a well-written and impressive memoir that doesn't hold back. It has its touching moments but often it's a heartbreaking story about a girl who struggles to find her way in the world despite her family's hold on her. Many scenes were hard to read, and I had to keep reminding myself that this wasn't a work of fiction. Westover's childhood was appalling but her story becomes one of perseverance, healing and strength.

Disclaimer: This Advanced Reading Copy (ARC) was generously provided by the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

This book made my jaw drop numerous times! What a memoir Tara Westover has written! She is a remarkable woman who has had much success despite what happened during her childhood. It was shocking to read how she was treated by her family and the obstacles that she encountered on her journey through adolescence, on to college, and coping with her family's alienation of her as an adult. It is a profound book that I highly recommend.

An honest and courageous recollection of growing up in the suppression of religious fundamentalism and living to tell the tale.

I think that Westover's writing was mellifluous at times, and stilted in others, but that it didn't often take away from her depiction of what it looks like to be gas-lighted in her most pivotal development stages as a child. Throughout the narrative, you can sense the dissonance percolating from her recollections. And whenever I hear stories of subcultures that are wildly different from what is mainstream, I always wonder about how it would be told from the other perspective. Because of course, extreme bias can often be both traumatizer and traumatized. Westover's story is not only vividly recalled, but it is also measured with fairness.

The backdrop reminded me a lot of The Hillbilly Elegy -- a personal account of rising from the haystack to succeed despite obvious cultural hindrances. And even though it seemed that supporting reflections were tossed in casually and tangentially in multiple occasions, I appreciated that this was more conclusive [than The Hillbilly Elegy] even while knowing that this journey is not over.

The book makes a statement on the role of education in a child's life, no matter what context you are nurtured in, but is underwhelming in the statement itself. The story certainly speaks for itself, but to attach an overarching resolution throughout the course of the novel should warrant a clearer exposition on what exactly education does overall in comparison to the role it played in her life - otherwise the title itself becomes misleading.

A remarkable story, and I'm still blown away that it's TRUE. Growing up Mormon in Idaho, Tara tells incident after incident about what she considered a "normal" upbringing. She didn't know any different. Eventually, Tara created opportunities for herself to see the outside world, and then tells readers about her experiences forging her way through entirely different lifestyles. I suspect we'll be hearing about this book for a while.

This book grabbed me from the get go and I read it fast. But wow, is it a tough read! I can’t believe the obstacles Tara overcame but it was tough reading about her home life.

I enjoyed this narrative nonfiction. The story was extraordinarily compelling and very inspiring. I would recommend this to anyone

One of the best books I have read this year—very introspective and inspirational. I will recommend it to my book club.