Educated is the memoir of Tara Westover, the youngest of seven children raised in the mountains of Idaho by fundamentalist Mormon parents. She entered a classroom for the first time at the age of 17, having taught herself enough algebra to score enough on the ACT to get into BYU. she literally and figuratively climbed out of the scrap pile that was her backyard. At times, her story is very difficult to read: her brother abusive and her parents both oppressive and negligent. Her survivalist parents raised her with very conservative Mormon beliefs, including the a subservient role for women in the home. What made this a strong 4 star read for me, was the author's journey of education and self realization. Having never heard of the Holocaust before college, Westover started her education at ground zero, absorbing volumes of history, politics, sociology, & religion. As her education progressed, she found herself at odds with her family's beliefs. She has gone through an incredible period of self realization having to choose between herself and her family. As with any memoir, this is one side of the story, and there are possibly some omissions and exaggerations. Westover tells this story with a very fragile voice. Her story is not over, and I look forward to hearing how it plays out. Thank you to #NetGalley for the arc. All opinions about #Educated are my own.

I love memoirs that allow you to be fully entrenched in someone's story. Westover's powerful and heart-wrenching book tells her story of growing up in a violent survivalist family who shunned any type of education. When she pushes to attend college, her and her family come apart at the seams. A truly inspirational, captivating, and moving story. Will definitely be recommending!

I’m torn about how to review this book. On one hand, I was fascinated by the author’s life growing up off the grid and how she spent her childhood. Her parents, mostly her dad, and his beliefs were interesting to read about. But then it turned to her going to college. And yes, she struggled a bit... but it glossed over much of her schooling to troubles with her family again. I guess I wanted to know why everyone considered her so brilliant that she got scholarships everywhere. I wanted a little less of the family drama and more about her education. 3.5 stars

5 Full Stars! I loved this book. There are so many layers to what this book is about. For me it had an interesting story of the authors insane childhood in Idaho. Then I reflected on the importance of education, she was successful without having any college readiness but still was very naive when she first left home. Of course there were many obstacles she had to overcome for success. It was great to see her have roommates that helped her grow, develop and acclimate to a "typical" college experience. The final thread throughout the book is her family's dynamics. I think this circled me back to the education, was her family not able to see her struggles to fit in with an abusive sibling due to the lack of experiences and education or was it mental illness? With her studies it had me feeling like a philosopher thinking and reflecting with her and her struggles. I highly recommend this book to non fiction lovers. It is one of the top memoirs I have read.

Educated is a fascinating memoir of a young woman in the midst of a soulful struggle between her family and herself. Tara Westover was raised by a "devout" Mormon father, who held firmly to certain "religious" beliefs that served to guide the lives of his children in some quite non-productive ways. In her education, both as a home school student, and later as a university student, Tara was forced to scrutinize what is right and what is wrong in the Mormon world that she was born into.

The book is well written, and Tara's story is compelling. I read it in record speed, as I couldn't wait to discover how she was able to get "Educated". I highly recommend it!

Not knowing my birthday had never seemed strange. I knew I'd been born near the end of September, and each year I picked a day, one that didn't fall on a Sunday because it's no fun spending your birthday in church..."I have a birthday, same as you," I wanted to tell [bureaucrats struggling to understand her lack of a birth certificate]. "It just changes. Don't you wish you could change your birthday?"

Tara Westover's memoir Educated has had a major impact in nonfiction these last weeks. If Fire and Fury was the nonfiction superstar of January, Educated is the It book for February. It made the rounds on lots of upcoming releases lists at the beginning of the year and was garnering tons of positive attention and reviews long before its February 20th release date two weeks ago. It's also drawn inevitable Glass Castle-comparisons, and I love that book so much, I couldn't imagine anything comparing. Until about the last third of this book, I thought it just might though.

I initially ignored Educated like I do anything delving too deeply into the university experience - it's fine if a story contains something about that for me and my interests, but I don't like reading too much on it, and I'm always turned off by Ivy League-worship. So I passed this one over initially. I somehow missed from the synopsis that Westover was raised in a fundamentalist Mormon family, which usually has me grabbing a copy as quickly as possible. In case if you're also misled by or uninterested in the educational aspect: it's more about the author's struggle to overcome a highly dysfunctional family background and accept knowledge and hard-won personal achievement over familial ties.

The gist is that Westover was raised off the grid, one of seven children of a charismatic but delusionally paranoid Mormon father and subservient mother, survivalists isolated on Buck Peak mountain in Idaho. Her father warned of the dangers of the government disagreeing with their ways of life and murdering them, like at Ruby Ridge, according to his preaching. If you've read other memoirs of children grown and gone from these type of families, maybe you already know what these stories entail. In brief - children forced to be adults too soon, neglect, doing dangerous work, religion and deference to God's will above all else.

The children don't attend school, not even homeschool - just Mormon Sunday school and Bible-reading, basically. They also don't receive any medical treatment for illnesses or injuries, have to work hard scrapping in their father's junkyard from early ages, or, additionally for Tara and her sister, helping their mother prepare essential oils and tinctures that she uses in her midwifery and homeopathic healing practices.

"There's a world out there," [her college-attending brother tells her.] "And it will look a lot different once Dad is no longer whispering his view of it in your ear."

Eventually, she follows the precedent set by an older brother who managed to get into Brigham Young University in Salt Lake City despite not even having been homeschooled (he and another brother would also go on to earn PhDs). She passes the ACT and earns herself a place at the college. From there, she has one of the most unbelievable but remarkably transformational fish out of water stories I've read in recent memory. If you think your adapting to college experience was hard, this'll put it in perspective.

And I do believe it, that's not in question at all - I just think that for all that she reveals, maybe some things are going unsaid. I felt like there were some steps missing between failing an algebra class and earning 100 on the final, between not knowing what a textbook was or how to use it and the thesis work she wrote at Cambridge. I know that's the whole point - and maybe I'm just cynical and not soft enough to let the whole lesson of this win me over. She did do it, and that's what matters, I just had a feeling I wasn't seeing everything. 

The constant struggle Tara engages in is that her two worlds become mutually exclusive. She can't be a worldly, thoughtful, educated and liberated woman while still maintaining ties to her fundamentalist, patriarchal, and outright delusional family. The core issue in the rift that opens with her family is the beatings, bone breakings, and various physical and mental abuses she and her sister suffered at the hands of one very troubled brother. Their parents, particularly their father, refuses to accept that this happened, or that the women understood what happened. 

There's a duality that's often at play as she considers what she remembers of certain experiences - some of it that she already knows as false - and uses that to question the veracity of other events. She pores over old journal entries and tries to cobble together narratives and reconcile who she was with who she's become, sometimes incorporating lines into her developing story and musing at how they've shown her something about her past self, often how they've influenced her growth somehow: "It's strange how you give the people you love so much power over you, I had written."

There are other cracks and fissures in her relationship with the family and the way they operate that widen over time too, as would be expected leaving an environment such as that and building a life of the mind out in a world where more than one opinion or belief set is permitted.

...the paranoia and fundamentalism were carving up my life, how they were taking from me the people I cared about and leaving only degrees and certificates - an air of respectability - in their place.

I found the writing uneven - the first half to two-thirds had gorgeous storytelling and enveloping writing that swept me along completely. I read more than a hundred pages and felt like no time had passed. It's nearly unputdownable despite the tough topics. But the last third of the book fell apart somewhat for me - the writing felt less polished, and became more a recitation of events, a kind of timeline, as she shuttles back and forth between university and "home".

She has mental breakdowns, withdraws into herself, almost fails her PhD. Upon being awarded a visiting fellowship to Harvard, she observes of herself, "I knew I should be drunk with gratitude that I, an ignorant girl who'd crawled out of a scrap heap, should be allowed to study there, but I couldn't summon the fervor. I had begun to conceive of what my education might cost me, and I had begun to resent it."

Reviewing memoirs is so difficult, because it's allegedly what someone did, the choices they actually made and what realistically transpired - not bad plot turns in a novel. But this litany of returns to Buck Peak, seemingly on every holiday or school break, felt extremely frustrating and tiring. Her pull to her family and her roots is strong and understandable -- part of the book is about redefining her own personhood for herself, but it became uncomfortable, at some point, to read about each return with its impending sense of doom.

And ultimately, I was bothered because I feel sad for her - her pain jumps off the page, even when she writes about it metaphorically or indirectly, as I thought became more common in the book's final section. She's cut ties with those family members who refused to acknowledge the truth of what she and her sister suffered, the reality of what's wrong within their isolated community, and how accidents and injury have harmed them physically and mentally in addition to the untruths and pain they've purposely inflicted on each other. But she kept returning, she kept acquiescing to certain conditions. And even if she's drawn that line now, it's clear that she hasn't closed the door in the estrangement completely, there

I agree with the buzz to great extent - this is a powerful, page-turning book and Tara's journey and accomplishments are magnificent. She has every reason to be proud of herself and similarly every reason not to keep looking back over her shoulder at where she came from. It's hard to accept that you're not going to have your family's love and approval if you live your life the way you've chosen, but I hope she's, if not already there, then close to a place where that's ok for her.

I remembered attending [a lecture] which...had begun by writing, "Who writes history?" on the blackboard. I remembered how strange the question had seemed to me then. My idea of a historian was not human; it was of someone like my father, more prophet than man, whose visions of the past, like those of the future, could not be questioned, or even augmented. Now, as I passed through King's College, in the shadow of the enormous chapel, my old diffidence seemed almost funny. Who writes history? I thought. I do.

Wow. I cannot imagine living the life that Tara Westover has lived. She is BEYOND brave.

I thought I was picking up a book that was going to be about a girl from a rural, religious home and lacked formal schooling, and how her perceptions of the world changed when she went away to college. Dudes - this was WAY more. A look at how the BIG, forceful personalities in lives and families shape people and relationship dynamics, for better or worse. A case study in the ripple effects of mental illness, the trauma and years of aftermath from gaslighting and the enabling dangerous behavior, the total mindf**k that happens when your parents/guardians have gone off the deep end and nobody can reel them back in. And a really, really inspiring story of how humans can overcome it all and find their way out - by openness to learning, through sheer force of will to break cycles of abuse, by allowing people to help when you really need it, and by finding that small ember in the darkness that reminds you that YOU are worthy and capable and deserving of truth, love, and being who you truly are.

This is a memoir of a totally disfunctional family. That this young woman was able to overcome the control of a father who has bipolar disorder and a religious zealot is almost unbelievable. Besides that father, her mother was not a good mother and her brother was physically and emotionally abusive. Added to that, she had no public education until she was 17 and went on to get her Phd. A very worthwhile read!

A story that will move and enlighten you! Tara was raised by parents who live on the fringes of society. They are survivalists living at the base of a mountain in Idaho. They claimed they were homeschooling their children but the education they offered was little more than how to read and write. Tara did not enter a classroom until she was 17 and a freshman at Brigham Young University. To say she experienced culture shock would be an understatement. And few would think it possible that she would end up with a PhD from Cambridge University.

First, I love her writing style. The narrative is easy to read and flows very nicely without ever getting bogged down. I could hardly put this book down. Second, her story will pull at your emotions. Some scenes are disturbing but necessary to effective relating the story and the challenges, both physical and emotional that she had to overcome. Finally, I found this book to be inspiring. Tara comes to adulthood with the odds stacked against her but she has a determination which allows her to continually try again. Overall, I loved this book and highly recommend it.

The very first words I read by Tara Westover were the words in her Author Note at the beginning of her memoir Educated.   

<blockquote>"This story is not about Mormonism. Neither is it about any other form of religious belief. In it there are many types of people, some believers, some not; some kind, some not. The author disputes any correlation, positive or negative, between the two."</blockquote>

They were important words (as were all the words that followed).   As her story unfolded it would have been so easy to forget her advice and draw precisely the conclusion she was warning against.    

Tara Westover was raised in an unorthodox family on an isolated farm at Buck Peak Idaho.    That her parents loved her was never in doubt yet at times I wanted to scream at them.  The dangerous situations they not only allowed but seemed to invite upon Tara and her siblings were to my mind criminal.   Her father in particular was a fervent devotee of the Mormon faith and this comment, typifies his attitude <i>“Don’t worry, honey,” he said. “God is here, working right alongside us. He won’t let anything hurt you. But if you are hurt, then that is His will.” </i>  Her mother was a  self confessed pleaser  <i> "...she said she couldn’t stop herself from speculating what people wanted her to be, and from contorting herself, compulsively, unwillingly, into whatever it was."</i> Over the years this did not work in Tara's favour when she needed a mother to stand firm in support of her against the bullying and violence of her aggressive brother.  

Tara's story was one of self discovery.     Having no formal education until she was 17 she had been heavily influenced by her parents beliefs which she accepted unreservedly.     When finally she began studying she discovered that not only did she have an aptitude for it but she also began questioning the way her life had been defined for her by others.   Whilst she excelled in her studies,  over the years her knowledge and broadened horizons created a chasm between her and her family and a battle of will ensued which she described this way.   <i>" Everything I had worked for, all my years of study, had been to purchase for myself this one privilege: to see and experience more truths than those given to me by my father, and to use those truths to construct my own mind. I had come to believe that the ability to evaluate many ideas, many histories, many points of view, was at the heart of what it means to self-create."</i>   

At times the book was difficult to read but not for  one millisecond did I consider stopping.  That she survived her childhood, overcame multiple obstacles and gained an impressive Cambridge and Harvard education is no small matter.    That she wrote an exceptional book is very much our gain.      If you appreciate beautiful, eloquent writing,  a fascinating story, and feel ready to experience a vast array of emotions I strongly encourage you to read Educated.

Many thanks to the author who did a magnificent job of telling her story, to Random House the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity of reading this digital ARC in exchange for an honest review which it was my absolute pleasure to provide.

When I started reading Educated: A Memoir, by Tara Westover, I was expecting a story about a homeschooler--an unschooled, perhaps. Within a few pages I realized my error; this was no homeschooling family she belonged to.

Tara was born into and raised in a very dysfunctional and dangerous environment within a large family ruled by fear of their mentally ill father. As she described her experiences out in the wilderness of Utah, her and other family members' scrapes with death, how her father treated them, and how she perceived these experiences, I just shook my head. This was her normal.

She was indoctrinated to think anything else was "of the devil" or "worldly", due to her father's mix of Mormonism and mental illness. I kept wanting her mother to stand up to him, but she rarely did. I cheered when Tara finally escaped in her late teens to attend college, and couldn't believe it each time she returned to her family home over and over again. Her education outside of her home life, over time, had enough of an effect that she came to view life, religion and the meaning of family differently, but I don't know if any education could ever erase the effect of those deep roots of shame, guilt, neglect, abuse that she suffered.

I am thankful Tara was able to share her story with the world, that she could find enough courage within herself to walk away from everything she knew and start again. If you haven't already, you will hear a lot about Educated this year. I suggest you pick up a copy and read it for yourself.

Good but hard read because of the subject/topic of a dysfunctional family.

It is so difficult to evaluate a memoir, especially one that describes such violence and abuse. I did not only read this, but I also felt it. No, I cannot claim to share any of the author’s harrowing experiences, but I had such a visceral reaction to so much of what she has written, and much of her story is so shocking that I often had to remind myself that I wasn’t reading fiction. Nonetheless, although I feel such sorrow for Westover’s past and present circumstances, what I took away from this is awe for her unimaginable bravery and strength, and joy for her accomplishments.

This is a fantastic read although the subject matter is so well described and frightening as to be almost unbelievable. Fact being stranger than fiction, it is the story of Tara Westover, a girl brought up in Idaho. One of seven siblings, her family are Mormon and her father does not believe in school. Four of the children are born at home and have no birth certificates, indeed no records at all as they have never visited a doctor and never set foot inside a school. At sixteen Tara decides she wants some education and sets about getting into BYU, Brigham Young University, a Mormon school. Despite many setbacks and the serious opposition of her parents she achieves it at the age of seventeen and goes on to Cambridge on a scholarship were she achieved an M Phil, and thence to Harvard. Then she returned to Cambridge eventually receiving a PHD.
The father, Gene, is what might be called a survivalist, believing that the world will end and he has stockpiled guns, food, fuel and water in a bunker. He is possibly also bi polar as Tara comes to realise when she studies psychology. The children all have backpacks ready to run for the hills should it become necessary. Her brother Shawn, bullying and cruel, is alternately loving and seriously violent so that Tara is constantly defending herself or more usually giving in to whatever it is he wants her to do from calling herself a whore to apologising. Her parents do not defend this youngest child from the older brother, rather turning a blind eye to it so that in time Tara wonders whether it really happened or she had made it up, as she is constantly accused of. The father runs a junk yard and the children are all expected to help. Health and Safety is not a consideration and there are many accidents, some serious. Believing that this is the Lord’s work, there is no medical intervention, even when the father loses half his face in an explosion. Tara’s mother is an unqualified midwife and herbalist but does not follow any particular course, just her own inclination.
All in all this is an interesting book, a story told well, without self pity, but quite uncomfortable to read.

Tara Westover’s memoir has created a lot of buzz, and all of it is justified. It’s the story of one woman’s journey from a fundamentally loving yet untenable home life, to the civilized world she has been raised to fear. Each chapter focuses on one meaningful event in the author’s life, and it’s told with sensitivity, grace, and yes, also a sprinkling of rage, because how can she not? But all told, Westover permits the balm of time and distance to balance her perspective. This book is for sale now, and it’s going to be read for a very long time.

I received my copy of Educated free and early, thanks to Random House and Net Galley. That said, if you have to pay full jacket price for this book, your money will be well spent.

Westover grows up in the mountains of Idaho in a large family that is nominally Mormon (Latter Day Saints, or LDS), but she and her siblings are denied the tight-knit communal bond that most members of that faith experience. Their father is deeply suspicious of the outside world including other church members, and as his pathology grows, they are increasingly isolated. Basic social expectations such as personal hygiene and clean clothing; inoculations against deadly diseases; a birth certificate; and an understanding of how to navigate within the greater society are denied her, as Dad’s survivalist views kick into gear. She is told the story of Ruby Ridge from the time she is tiny, but grows up believing this is an event that has happened to her own family, and that Federal agents might break into her own home at any time.

Veteran teachers like me are fascinated by the differences in how students process traumatic events, and Westover is a strong case in point. Some students experience the death of a beloved grandparent or divorcing parents, and they come undone and aren’t able to function normally for several years. Then there are remarkable young people like Westover that experience horror after horror exponentially and yet somehow, with little external assistance, they are able to claw themselves free of the rubble and become high achievers.

As Westover leaves home against the strident objections of her father, she struggles to reconcile the wider world with everything that she has been taught from the cradle, and she also struggles to win her family’s forgiveness and acceptance. As she is battered, sometimes physically, by one cruel rejection after another, a friend asks her, “Have you ever thought maybe you should just let them go?” And yet, for Tara, this is unthinkable.

There’s a lot of gritty material here, along with a number of experiences that are just weird, such as Tara’s brain-damaged mother becoming a local folk hero with her own brand of witch-doctor medicine. There are also moments of dark humor that break up the misery and terror, along with an occasional kind or enlightening act on the part of a family member or member of the public that is able to wink through for a brief time in Tara’s life. But ultimately the thing that makes it possible to wade through the nightmare that constitutes much of Tara’s childhood is our knowledge, set within the book’s title and author description, that she will emerge triumphant.

Westover tells us that the bizarre system of beliefs and taboos practiced by her family are not typical of Mormon families, and in fact a bishop that counsels her once she arrives at Brigham Young University tries to help her separate herself, to some degree, from the madness that awaits her at home during school breaks. This reviewer grew up alongside a number of Mormon classmates, and I have to agree that none of the things Westover’s parents brought down on her and her siblings is attributable to that church. That’s not how they work.

I highlighted dozens of passages that range from the wry, to the stupefying, to the outrageous, but when all is said and done, each is better when read within context. Go out and get this book. You won’t be sorry, and at the end of it, you’re almost guaranteed to look at your own family in a gentler light.

Such a heart wrenching and powerful memoir! I found myself unable to put this book down both because I wanted to hear all about how she survived and conquered on and because of disbelief of all the awful and painful things she had to endure growing up with her family. Through it all- the abuse by her older brother, the beliefs of her survivalist father and her submissive mother, not being allowed to go to public school, living with a family that doesn’t believe in conventional medicine or healthcare and so much more, she was able to persevere and create a better life for herself. She found a way to educate herself, pass the ACT and get into college. I’m so thankful she had the courage to share her story and I believe her book can help others who may feel hopeless know there is indeed hope. Will definitely recommend this book to others.

Thank you to Random House, Tara Westover and Netgalley for an ARC copy of the book.

Phenomenal!! What a riveting and raw account of the horrors of psychological abuse and, ultimately, survival. I could not put this book down.

I was listening to Steve Wright in the afternoon on Radio 2 and he was interviewing Tara Westover about her book, having heard her mention just a couple of snippets I decided this was something I needed to read.Educated is the autobiography of Tara Westover who lived in rural Idaho as part of a large family. Tara was brought up a Mormon, but not the main stream religion that is recognised world wide, but a singular fanatical version. Tara did not go to school, she did not have access to the wider world and when she finally attended college she asked in on of her first lectures " what is the Holocaust?'. Because of all her academic accolades Educated is so beautifully written, so descriptive that you feel you grow and discover, in the same way that Tara does as she reveals what her life was like. The shock of quite violent physical abuse seems tempered by the fact that Tara, at the time, did not recognise it as such and so you, the reader accept it. As Tara grows and discovers who she is individually, not as part of the Westover family, so you begin to see this quite frightening, brutal upbringing for what is truly is. This is Tara's debut novel and I highly recommend it.