In the first section of the book we read about Tara's childhood set in the beautiful foothills of Buck's Peak, Idaho. Initially her upbringing sounds quirky - no birth-certificate, no schooling, not much in the way of hygiene. We soon realize that her dad shows signs of a mental illness - paranoia, depression, illusions of grandeur etc. The most shocking part of the book, is his total disregard for his family's safety, some of the injuries we read about are lost fingers, several cases of severe brain trauma, and two horrible burns. He believes that God will keep them save or miraculously heal them if necessary, no medical intervention needed. Her parents also allow one of her elder brothers to physically and emotionally abuse Tara and her sister, as they choose to believe that this is not happening. One of the things that works well in Educated is that Tara balances all these upsetting things with happier memories - her father allowing her to join the town's theater, and loving moments shared with her brothers.

When her formal education starts we realize how isolated her upbringing was, she knows almost nothing about the world beyond her immediate community and her father's beliefs. As time passes she slowly assimilates into mainstream life, and starts to question elements of her childhood. When she raises this with her parents, and refuses to back down, they disown her. They also convince everyone, sometimes even her (and me), that her memories are false. So escaping and becoming educated, gave her a voice, which caused her to lose her family - something she is still struggling with. In an interview she says: " ...I realized I had reconciled with the things in my past that had been bad, but I don’t think I had reconciled with losing the things that had been good. "

I definitely recommend this well-written, thought-provoking memoir.

I have mixed feelings. The first half of the book had inconsistencies that left me with more questions than answers, and there is some controversy with family members who have come forward saying there are inaccuracies. A memoir is the telling of events from the perspective of the author. It's her story to tell. I hope she wrote the book in good faith, and this is her perception of the truth as she remembers it. Perhaps her interpretation of some of the events are different than her siblings. It happens.

The second half of the book is not only about her education, it's a horrific description of the physical abuse she suffered from one of her brothers. She writes with clarity the emotional devastation and consequences of the abuse and the pain of her parents disbelief and lack of support. I wish the author the best and hope she and her family can get the help they need and find a way to heal.

I finished reading ‘Educated: A Memoir’ written by Tara Westover a few days ago. I wanted to give myself some time to reflect on my thoughts about the book before writing this review. Several of my Goodreads friends have given this book glowing reviews, and now I see why. This memoir is at times horrifying and at other times heartwarming. It’s a tale of the triumph of the human body, and the human spirit over sometimes medieval like philosophies and practices. It’s a story about surviving the family you’re born into and carving a life for yourself separate and apart from that family. I think that we all have family survival stories. No family is perfect and we all come out with a few scars. Tara Westover emerges with many physical and psychological scars, but the miracle is that she emerges.

Tara was the youngest of seven children raised in rural Idaho. Her parents are Mormon fundamentalists, and her father is an ardent survivalist who was further radicalized in his beliefs by the incident that the FBI has with the Randy Weaver family in Idaho. Tara was never sent to school, and was rarely even home-schooled. She learned how to read, but that was about it. Instead she was put to work helping her mother make plant based tinctures, and when she got old enough (eleven or twelve) she was sent out to work alongside her father and brothers in the family junkyard. Tara’s brother ‘Shawn’ (she has given him a false name in the book) had some traumatic brain injuries from a car accident and scrapyard accidents. He was very abusive to all of the siblings who remained at home. Neither of the parents would acknowledge that Shawn was in the wrong. They usually gave him a pass because he was ‘disciplining’ them in order to help them learn to better walk in the way of their religious beliefs. Her descriptions of Shawn’s abuse and her parents subsequent lack of protection was heart wrenching. (Trigger warning for abuse survivors. Some scenes are pretty graphic.)

When she is sixteen, Tara is convinced by one of her older brothers, Tyler, that she really needed to leave the family for her own safety, and that education could be her means of escape. Tyler had studied for the ACT (pre-college entrance exam) on his own, and scored high enough to gain entry into BYU. He encouraged Tara to try to follow the same path. With that encouragement Tara set out to teach herself mathematics, science, grammar, and all the other things that would be covered in the ACT. Eventually she scored high enough to be admitted to BYU. She started attending college at the age of 17. BYU would be her first time attending any type of formal education, and her first time living away from home. She had so much to learn about the world, society, history, and herself. She often struggled to balance the things she learned in college against the dogma she was taught at home. The dissonance between those two realms caused her severe anxiety and made her question her place in the world and eventually caused a mental breakdown.

She eventually earned the prestigious and highly competitive Gates Cambridge Scholarship. She went on the attended both Cambridge and Harvard. She earned a PhD in intellectual history and political thought from Cambridge. All the while she continued to have contact with her family who tried to persuade her that her pursuit of a life outside of their belief structure would ultimately lead to her death when the imminent end of the world occurred. When she returned home for visits, Shawn would continue to physically abuse her, and her parents would continue to minimize and justify his actions. Eventually for the sake of her own mental health and safety she had to stop visiting the family compound in Idaho.

While this is a harrowing story, it is also a hopeful one. Tara shows how strong the human spirit can be as it to tries overcome an untenable situation. She tells her story with a matter-of-factness that belies to some degree the underlying stresses that must have been each family member’s constant companion. She was not made bitter by her experiences, and explains her journey with clear-eyed grace. This was an amazing and inspirational journey.

Thank-you to NetGalley, Random House Publishing and the author, Tara Westover for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review

This memoir tells an incredible tale, one you would not even believe had we not heard of similar situations in the past. I am still struggling to grasp how someone who had no formal education until college could write something so well. Westover taught herself all she needed to until she was able to apply for college, being accepted to Brigham Young. It was not until age seventeen that she learned of major world events like the Holocaust. Given the fact that her family was far removed from society, scratching out a living on the mountain by salvaging metal from her father's junkyard and assisting her mother's midwifery work, survivalism is all the author ever knew. Despite the increasing violence of one of her brothers as he targeted her, going so far as to force her head-first into the toilet for some perceived slight, to Westover, Buck Peak was home.

I could not put this book down. It was literally a struggle for me to do so. But, once having finished the book, it has taken a while for me to fully comprehend what I read and to decompress from it. I can not even fully grasp how she must feel, to this day. Her childhood was both idyllic (the freedom to roam whenever so inclined) and a nightmare (no schooling, no doctor/medicine, a psychotic brother). She loves her family fiercely even as they continue to reject her since she left. I can't even reconcile them, it seems impossible.

We see her religious fanatic of a father, ruling the the family with an iron fist. He has taught his children to distrust anything from the government. As a result they hoard weapons and food for the coming Days of Abomination, while foregoing things we consider standard parts of civilization - birth certificates, medical care, public schooling. As the story went on, and terrible accident after terrible accident occurred I kept thinking, surely this is the time they will HAVE to seek medical treatment. Yet it never happened, despite car accidents, explosions, and all sorts of mishaps that no one else would bat an eye at for going to the emergency room. Yet it was always Tara's mother to the rescue with her herbs and tinctures. So many times I wanted to scream at her parents, to make them see what they were doing to their children, but even if I did, and they could hear me, nothing would change. Not only is Tara's father one to be feared, but one of her older brothers as well. His violence increased rapidly over time and Tara bore the brunt of it. He could have killed her more than once, and no one in her family would have said a word. That is terrifying and heartbreaking and infuriating. How many other children are living through the same situation now, and how many will not be able to make it out like Westover did? There are times also where we see a glimmer of who her mother might have been had she not married Tara's father. While she defers to him almost always, there are these slivers of time where it appears she too might break free. But the moments are fleeting and do not come along often.

I can not for one moment fathom how Westover could even want to have a relationship with any of the family members still living on Buck Peak. The bond was so strong in her youth, from her days on the mountain, that it causes her time and again to want to be a part of the family while keeping her new life as well. And perhaps it is also something I do not necessarily even need to understand for myself. The things that happen in this book defy believability at every turn, and yet they all survive. And even while she was out discovering the real world, the call of the mountain, her family, her home remained strong. This is certainly not a criticism of her and I hope it is not taken that way. I just can't understand it and I admire her for trying to reconcile both portions of her life today. It would be so easy for Westover to renounce it all and go back to the mountain; she loves her family deeply. But she also knows now that there is a whole wide world out there. I don't know if those two pieces will ever fit together for her. I hope they will. One of the hardest parts of the book for me was specifically with her mother, begging her to see, and her mother refusing. There was a brief time where it seemed like Westover was getting through to her mother and sister, and then suddenly everything went back to the way it had always been.That was awful to read, so heartbreaking.

Even so, despite all the brutality and shock of Westover's education both before she left and after, this is an important book and one I highly recommend.

I felt so many different emotions while reading this book; I felt sick to my stomach. I felt disgusted. I felt angry, sad. I was in awe. I also felt so happy and proud of Tara.
What a ride .

Educated is a memoir, told by Tara - a woman who grew up in a survivalist family and left her home to get an education (and she eventually did, earning a PhD).
Reading this book - reading about her family, and especially his Dad - was heartbreaking. The way they isolated themselves throughout the years, how they believed so much in certain things (I'm not talking about religion, but of actual facts) was astonishing and hard to read.

Even if you only read memoirs sporadically I highly suggest you to pick this one up, ASAP. Be aware, though, that there were multiple episodes of abuse throughout this novel.

This was a very interesting read, and an eye opening look into the authors long road to discovery and to finding her own truth.
I am intrigued by the authors strength and how she was strong enough to leave her situation, but yet weak enough to always fall back into it. I guess it was always the hope that the family would change in some ways,her ingrained beliefs and also the pull of the land.
Tara grew up in a family that had very strong views about the world and religion and what could happen if those beliefs were challenged. It was a hard life of manual labor and and lack of schooling, as the father did not believe in public education, he was a person with no real empathy and seems to put his children at risk quite often with his need to get things done on his terms, this is explained more as you get into the story. The father is also a survivalist and always prepping for the doomsday scenario, stocking food ammunition and whatever might be needed to ride it out.
Her mother became a midwife and then an herbalist, something that took off as you will read later in the book, due to treating her husband after an accident.
The relationship between siblings, was good in some cases, but very bad in others. Half of the siblings went on to get a high education and others never left the beliefs the father had instilled in them. It was an interesting study to follow the family dynamics.
I loved how determined the author was to get a good education, even when she doubted herself. It is quite an impressive journey.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the ARC of this book.

Gripping. Moving. At times horrifying.

I couldn’t put this book down, which is why I’m writing this review at 3AM. This first person narrative of the author’s life illustrates how her family’s homeschooling and fundamentalist, cult-like religious zeal ended up sheltered, abused, and almost brainwashed her. Their extreme distrust of government & society combined with likely mental illness plays out like a coming of age thriller, made all the more frightening since it is a true story.

I received this book as a free ARC from Random House & NetGalley.

I loved reading about this author, who was raised in an extreme Mormon family, raised totally off the grid, not even "homeschooled", yet she went on to earn a Ph.D. from Cambridge University. Her story is inspirational, amazed at what one can achieve in spite of all the barriers put in place. I was spellbound by her story and I think you will be too.

I love reading memoirs. There is something about hearing someone's experience in their own words that is really powerful and resonating. This book was amazing. All the things that Tara Westover experienced and overcame was incredible. She had so many reasons to quit and I feel like most people wouldn't have blamed her. She suffered incredible emotional abuse and it took her a long time to even begin to overcome it. Somewhere inside herself she found the strength to break the destructive patterns of the life she was given and overcome incredible challenges.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2249242818

This memoir is heartbreaking. The children grow up in such unnecessary squalor that it is difficult not to be angry with the parents. Their suspicion of the government and schools lead them to lead such an isolated, subsistence life. Their distrust of hospitals leads them to endure much more pain than is necessary. The memoir drew me in and made me care for Westover’s family. It is a testament to how mental illness can affect an entire family. It is also a testament to how, with a bit of outside support, one can rise up from an extremely difficult childhood and change the trajectory of her life. .

I received this book courtesy of Netgalley and its publisher, Random House, and, boy, am I glad I received it. This was a book that I flew through. I simply couldn’t put it down. I seldom give five stars to a book. A book with five-star book is one that will “stay” with me for a long time. “Educated” met the criteria.

This a true story about the life of a young woman. She grew up in the mountains in Utah. The story is remarkable. It is hard to believe someone’s parents would have the strong beliefs described, such as religion, government, and medicine. Life on the mountain was appalling. It is amazing the author was able to enter college with virtually little primary education. Her college journey is astounding and incredible she graduated from college with a Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctorate.

It is an inspirational story and shows how an education can change a person. Also, the surprising impact on the family when an education is obtained. As the book stated, “the three who had left the mountain, and the four who had stayed. The three with doctorates, and the four without high school diplomas. A chasm had appeared, and was growing.”

An amazing memoir of a young lady who one of seven children of two devout, pious Mormons who are all ruled under the strict hand of the patriarch of the family. This memoir illustrates what happens when untreated mental illness meets religious overzealousness and how education liberates one from it all.

Having had no formal schooling and only a will to escape the abuse and dangers at home, Tara determines to educate herself thereby creating distance between herself and her family. She constantly questions her decisions and is in consistent turmoil over the her educational attainments and how it contradicts with her family's religious beliefs and all that she has ever been taught. Ultimately, she knows, and eventually accepts, that her education will wedge a great divide between her past and her future.

The author's style of writing left me completely enthralled from beginning to end. Not only did she tell her story with ease using accessible language, but she described her characters so well that I felt instantly connected to the family. I felt her pain when Shawn pulled her hair and shoved her head into the toilet. I totally understood her fear and hesitation of working with her careless father. And I understood that despite her family being completely dysfunctional, she still loved them and wanted a relationship with them -- but a healthy one. I was hopeful until the very end that they would all get the help they so truly needed, so that healing could take place. I'm happy that she has embraced her extended family and pray one day her parents will find it in her their hearts to give her the support she needs so that she heal from Shawn's abuse.

I preferred this book to Hillbilly Elegy because it is not so repetitive and for a woman to do what Tara did it is much more complicated compared to what she would have to endure if she was a boy. That said it was an emotional reading even if a compelling one.

Questo libro mi é piaciuto di piú rispetto ad Hillbilly Elegy, fondamentalmente perché molto meno ripetitivo, ma soprattutto perché Tara é una donna e per riuscire a fare quello che ha fatto lei da ragazza, é sicuramente piú difficile rispetto al farlo da maschio. Detto questo, é stata una lettura emotivamente molto pesante, per quanto non riuscissi a smettere.

THANKS NETGALLEY FOR THE PREVIEW!

"Educated" is the powerful first book by Tara Westover, who grew up in the mountains of Idaho, in a survivalist Mormon family, with six siblings. She didn’t receive a birth certificate until she was nine years old and was never enrolled in public school or ever taken to a medical doctor. Instead of being in school, the Westover children were helping their parents prepare for the end of the world or a government takeover. Summers were spent canning food and hoarding supplies. “Home-schooling” consisted of being taught to read by their mother with the optional independent study of old textbooks. Their father’s scrapyard was their playground, and later a terrifying place to work.

The Westover children felt obligated to work for their father and it often put them in mortal danger. When things went wrong, and they inevitably and repeatedly did, traditional medical treatment was forbidden. Westover’s mother was a self-taught midwife and herbalist. And if she couldn’t cure/save you, it was God’s will. The most damaging relationship was with her brother Shawn; he was emotionally and physically abusive and at one point threatens to kill or have her killed. I was troubled each time Westover returned home; desperate to stay connected with her family even though they had damaged her in so many ways and were convinced she was possessed by the devil.

Like most of us, the author wanted to fit in with her peers and her upbringing made that impossible until she was an adult and able to break free of their hold and their myths. Her formal education began at 17 when she enrolled at BYU when she should have been finishing high school. She went on to graduate magna cum laude, and then earned a MA and a PhD from Trinity College in Cambridge, England.

"Educated" is a Mormon twist on "The Glass Castle" (by Jeannette Walls). Westover’s memoir is beautifully written: elegant, tragic, yet hopeful, all at the same time. It’s cliché, but I couldn’t put it down.

I received an ARC ebook courtesy of NetGalley, all opinions are my own.

If you're looking to get your fill of memoirs for the year, you've come to the right place. "Educated: The Memoir" by Tara Westover is a heartfelt, moving, coming of age story. Beautifully written, the author takes us through years of abuse, both physical and psychological, to the present day in which she is a successful PhD holder.

I give this book five out of five stars and cannot recommend it more highly. Westover's voice is unique, managing to be both authentically agonized and hopeful at the same time. I have truly never read anything like it.

For a full review, please visit Blonde Bibliotaph at the link below.

This was a bit much for me. Unlike the The Glass Castle or The Great Alone (memoir and fiction respectively) that both also center around a family with an unhinged patriarch, Educated offers little light in the darkness. The aforementioned examples were both hard and uncomfortable reads, but I was left a changed person. Educated didn't move me. The writing is a little bland, the tangents into her academia were downright boring, and the ludicrousness of each encounter and conversation just left me aghast. There was no internal conflict here - I could find no redeeming qualities in any of these people, and I can't understand why this was a memoir and not a court document for a restraining order.

“Everything I had worked for, all my years of study had been to purchase for myself this one privilege: To see and experience more truth than those given to me by my father, and to use those truth to construct my own mind. I had come to believe that the ability to evaluate many ideas, many histories, many points of views, was at the heart of what it means to self create.”
I think it’s been a few hours I finished this book, but I just can’t stop thinking about it. It’s one of those books that push you out of your own circle and make you think of things you never did. I feel so much respect for this woman, who was born in a very conservative, abusive environment, and still took an active role to lead her own life rather than watching it lead by others.
Tara Westover was born in Buck Peak, Idaho into a conservative Mormon community. She didn’t have a birth certificate, didn’t go to school, didn’t go to hospital. Her father didn’t believe in the government and any system that belongs to it. As she grew older, things got worse. Her father became very unpredictable, and she had a violent relationship with her older brother. At sixteen, she decided to educate herself. And this mesmerizing journey ended up in Cambridge and Harvard.
This book is about her never ending conflict between loyalty to family while finding her own truth and making a life for herself. It’s a beautifully written memoir with great talent and modesty. Throughout her story, I felt she was weak and strong, courageous and scared all at the same time. And I’m sure everyone will find a part of Tara in themselves.
At times, the content was hard to read, and I’m very sensitive about reading abusive relationships in a very graphic style. But, Westover’s style didn’t cause me to shy away from it. Her telling felt very natural, not over the top. It didn’t feel like she was trying to tear my heart into pieces. She told what happened very calmly, as impartial as possible.
I think I will think about this book for a long time, and it will be one of my non-fiction favourites. A definite 5 star read.
Big thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Random House for providing a free copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

An impressive piece of nonfiction that will leave the reader stunned by the obstacles overcame by the writer and how much she managed to achieve compared to what she had when she started her life. There are so many lessons to learned from this book and although I would recommend this to anyone, I think it would be amazing if the young people with confidence issues out there read this, to understand it is possible to achieve anything, be someone you want, if you work hard enough and believe yourself. I don't often read non-fiction but this book deserves to be read. Tara Westover. deserves an applause.

Tara Westover begins her memoir with a prologue description of the land on which she grew up as the wind whips her hair across her face and she looks upward to the mountain at the dark form of the Indian Princess. The princess, buried in the snow as if covered against the cold during the winter, reemerges each spring.

The mesmerizing memoir shows a young girl, one of seven siblings, first finding a way to endure with a father who stockpiles supplies and plans for shelter against the end times and a mother who is an unlicensed midwife collecting and selling homeopathic remedies. Little contact is allowed with the outside world except for their church where the parents’ ideas take Mormonism into an extreme form. From a young age, Tara works in dangerous conditions in her father’s scrap iron business with little regard for safety before a brother bullies her unmercifully with tacit parental approval as she begins to come of age.

Tara begins to find her way out of this situation through education, entering Brigham Young University without having been to public school and with little in the way of homeschooling that she has not taught herself. Yet she continues to be drawn back to family and the mountain with its Indian Princess. Her family leaves the reader head-shaking as they waffle between denial, rationalization, accusation, and occasional glimpses of something that could be taken for love if you look hard enough.

Some of the fascination of this memoir comes from watching which of the siblings get out of this restricting situation to become survivors and which ones buy into it and continue its hurtful pattern. I read an advance copy of the book that came out on February 20. I’m predicting you should read a copy if you want to join the book conversation that will have book lovers talking.

An interesting book that takes a look at a family who lives on the fringe with her survivalist family. Her father was anti-education and so Westover’s childhood was filled with teachings must different than the traditional kind. It’s been compared to The Glass Castle and I’d say that’s an apt description.