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.

This memoir by Tara Westover has overwhelmed me. There is a LOT to digest here. You will be shocked and horrified by many of the stories you read here about the family Tara grew up in. Ironically enough, you will also be in awe and have a grudging respect and appreciation for other aspects of these characters. As I mentally recount the many stories Tara shared of her family, it's staggering to realize that this all really happened. There were many times I felt like grabbing Tara and shouting at her to stop going back home. Again and again she put herself in such danger simply by being in her family's presence.

Tara Westover was born in 1986 in Buck Peak, Idaho to devout fundamentalist Mormons living off the grid. They distrusted the government and guarded their privacy. This sentiment became increasingly hardened when they hadn't even reported the births of the last four of their seven children. They used midwives when giving birth to stay out of the hospitals, another entity of which they held a deep distrust. Her parents believed in trusting God to heal all illnesses and injuries. To that end, the Mom became immersed in creating tinctures, salves, poultices and other natural remedies over the years to treat any and all ailments. This was taken to a mind-numbing extreme when there were car accidents, burnings, brain injuries and other health crises for which the average human being would call 911 for a heart-racing trip to the nearest hospital. The children were also home-schooled to maintain control over them and keep them available for working on their property.

Through years of Tara's father's religious mania and indoctrination, and various forms of mental and physical abuse from a male sibling, Tara triumphed to acquire her independence and a doctorate from Cambridge University. This is an utterly riveting real-life story of a remarkable young woman.

I have been hearing some very disparaging articles, thoughts, etc about this book. There was an NPR interview with the author and she did not sound like the "voice" in this book. During the interview she sounded as though her childhood was still a "good one" and that the mountain was a wonderful place to grow up. There seems to be too much duality I guess is the word I'm going to use between what the author wrote and what she is now speaking. Because of this I'm not going to finish this book or review it.
Thanks for the opportunity.

My Rating: 4.5 stars

Wow, what a story! This was one of the most fascinating memoirs I’ve ever read and one of the most well-written ones too! From the moment I started reading, I was so engaged and drawn into Tara Westover’s story that I found it impossible to put this book down – a first for me with a nonfiction book! Actually, throughout the entire time I was reading, I had to remind myself constantly that this was not a novel, not some fictional coming-of-age tale about a girl who was able to rise above her circumstances and carve out an existence for herself despite everything that happened, because in all honesty, this absolutely read like a novel. Tara’s story is truly amazing and I’m glad she got the chance to tell it-- the way she was able to get an education for the first time at the age of 17, even being able to study at Cambridge and Harvard and eventually earning her PhD, was absolutely inspiring! I appreciate the raw honesty with which she relayed her story and am impressed by the tremendous strength and courage that it undoubtedly took for her to lay bare her inner conflicts and struggles so vividly for us, also going to great lengths to clarify the details and events that were part of her own memory versus the ones that were not. As we were exposed to one harrowing incident after another and bore witness to the destructive behavior and actions of Tara’s parents – her religious fanatic survivalist father and meek, subservient mother – there were moments where I wanted this story to be a work of fiction because it was so hard to come to terms with all the cruelty and abuse that went on. It felt surreal at times, witnessing this family’s brutality – more specifically the father and one of the brothers -- spurred by an unwavering, cult-like adherence to an ideology that obviously defied logic as well as all common sense yet was embraced so wholeheartedly and unquestioningly. Tara never once used the word “cult” in her memoir and it is unclear whether she ever thought of her family as such, but the way she described her parents, especially later on with how powerful they became and all the “employees” who not only worked for them but also admired them and adapted their ideology, it is obvious to any outside observer that’s what her family eventually became. In this regard, I can’t help but worry for Tara, with the publication of this memoir, what her future will look like, especially knowing that her journey is far from over and she continues to struggle with reconciling the new life she built for herself against the love and loyalty she still has for her family.

And this is the one area – Tara’s continued sense of loyalty to her family – that made me struggle with rating this book and, to a certain extent, writing this review. I absolutely felt for Tara and it was heartbreaking what she went through, but at the same time, it was very difficult for me to reconcile her constant need to still seek validation from her family even after everything that happened. She acknowledged herself that her parents were abusive, manipulative, maniacal to the point of delusional, and their lifestyle was one that she no longer wanted to be a part of -- her parents, for their part, also made it clear that her refusal to conform and submit to their ideology meant that she was “no longer welcome” in the family and they wanted nothing to do with her anymore either -- yet despite all this, somehow, Tara is still not able to let go. The part where she talked about writing to her mother every year and basically “begging for approval” to see her was tough to read and in all honesty, frustrated me to no end. Even though her family outright rejected her time and time again and she already knew it was “pointless” to continue reaching out to her family and making the trip back to her family’s compound every year, she still continued to do it – almost as though, despite knowing the impossibility of it, she was hoping for some divine miracle that her family might one day “come around” and change their ways. While part of me definitely understands the difficulty of cutting ties with family and empathizes with the conflicting emotions that Tara continues to struggle with, another part of me can’t help wondering whether someday, she might succumb and everything she worked so hard to achieve – the education and new life -- may be in vain. I’m pretty sure there will be more to this story in the future and I can only hope that whatever happens, Tara can continue to find her inner peace and happiness.

Overall, this was a tough read, but a powerful one and so very important! It opened my eyes to so many things and I know Tara’s story will continue to stay with me for a long time to come. Highly recommended and necessary read!!

Received ARC from Random House via NetGalley

Am I allowed to say that this will probably be one of the best books I read all year already?!!?! The author's format of her life in small chunks was approachable and refreshing to read. I want to cheer for her, yell at her and cry for her - sometimes in the same chapters. I will be telling everyone they should read this book!

This was quite honestly the best memoir that I've ever read. It was poignant, heartfelt, captivating, and superbly written. It's hard to write a memoir on such difficult topics as this one without being either preachy or disengaged, but Westover completely nails it. I'm seriously impressed.