Reviews tagging 'Body horror'

Educated by Tara Westover

86 reviews

beccabees's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia, Emotional abuse, Racial slurs, Religious bigotry, Sexism, Toxic relationship, Injury/Injury detail, Blood, Body horror, Car accident, Domestic abuse, Violence, Child abuse, Animal cruelty, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Medical trauma, and Misogyny

scoobygirl93's review against another edition

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Body shaming, Gore, Grief, Violence, Xenophobia, Chronic illness, Cursing, Abandonment, Ableism, Gaslighting, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Antisemitism, Blood, Bullying, Cancer, Car accident, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Racism, Stalking, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Medical trauma, Police brutality, Vomit, Fire/Fire injury, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Racial slurs, Religious bigotry, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Terminal illness, Torture, Toxic relationship, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Death, Medical content, Pregnancy, and Sexism

matonnhermann's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Child abuse, Gaslighting, Blood, Medical trauma, Misogyny, Animal cruelty, Body horror, Body shaming, Pregnancy, Adult/minor relationship, Car accident, Emotional abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, Abandonment, Hate crime, Panic attacks/disorders, Toxic relationship, Violence, and Physical abuse

Moderate: Fire/Fire injury

genderqueer_hiker's review against another edition

dark sad tense medium-paced

0.5

Repetitive, uninsightful trauma porn. The author's conclusions show a substantial lack of nuance or consideration for her upbringing and experiences in insular fundamentalism. Her representation of people's intentions seems more rooted in what she requires the interactions to mean rather than any of the depth and complexity of reality. She does not appear to have shaken one of the core tenants of fundamentalism - black and white thinking. Things are not cleanly divided into good people and bad people, right or wrong, pure or sullied, holy or evil. And frankly, I doubt this would have ended up on the NYT best sellers list if she was raised fundamentalist Christian rather than Mormon. Or if she had gone to state schools rather than Oxford and Cambridge. 

I very much hope the author has found peace and safety outside of this story, but this unfiltered, unconsidered childhood narrative seems intent on titillating rather than offering anything of substance. We're encouraging to gawk, as if this is truly uncommon or unheard of. It sells the lie that only the mix of fundamentalism and (possible) mental health issues are to blame for these outcomes. The author is either unaware of her readers or just doesn't care about us - she has not done any work to tell this story without retraumatizing. She never owns any of her family's behavior as abuse - she makes excuses for them at every point. Bipolar disorder is offered up as a weak foil, but even she undermines that partial explanation by using her current voice to dismiss it as an immature consideration. She still seems incredibly early or stalled in her process. 

Also, when did she attend college, that she could work a cheap summer job and have money to pay for college by herself? A lot of the money details don't make sense. It was also weird to not find out until she goes to college that she doesn't wash, and that's the norm in her family? Comments are made about her family house smelling like rot later on, but no consideration of why that might be. 

This story really just felt like the author trying to find an audience for her to repeat the narrative and lore she's created to cushion her psyche. It lacked authenticity, and it's rather unusual to have a clearly unreliable narrator in a memoir. After reading it, I felt like the entire book was meant to pull a fast one, telling me a very creative fiction. 

With more thought, it also bothers me that there is no mention of the police or social services being called. Perhaps Idaho is different than other places; perhaps their family was known and feared. But it doesn't make sense that particularly Shawn's publicly violent assaults of both family and local youth and their two car accidents with unregistered and uninsured vehicles never met with closer scrutiny from law enforcement. Also, given her family environment as described, I suspect sexual abuse was also part of her and/or her sister's experiences, but that is not mentioned at any point. 

I also don't understand why people went out of their way to be nice to her after she left home. She writes her younger self as very abrasive, judgemental, and rude, yet people reached out and tried to nuture and take care of her (e.g., Robin and the Bishop at college). She's very socially awkward; people don't like that. Maybe BYU is more used to trying to tame feral young people from fundamentalist sects? Maybe she was very pretty? There's no reflection on why she was granted far more opportunities than most other children of separatist households (or even her own).

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fire/Fire injury, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Misogyny, Racial slurs, Religious bigotry, Sexism, Bullying, Medical trauma, Emotional abuse, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Gore, Physical abuse, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Body horror, Car accident, Gaslighting, Injury/Injury detail, and Medical content

rebah's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Religious bigotry, Fire/Fire injury, Blood, Torture, Abandonment, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Animal cruelty, Death, Domestic abuse, Gaslighting, Racial slurs, Body shaming, Sexism, Child abuse, Sexual violence, Grief, Gun violence, Cancer, Car accident, Injury/Injury detail, Emotional abuse, Medical content, Animal death, Body horror, Bullying, Genocide, Classism, Cursing, Dementia, Toxic relationship, Violence, Adult/minor relationship, Hate crime, Physical abuse, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis

gypdrop's review against another edition

challenging dark inspiring reflective sad tense slow-paced

5.0

Wow. Heart breaking. Good read if you’re mentally prepared for an emotional roller coaster. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Child abuse, and Domestic abuse

Moderate: Emotional abuse and Body horror

Minor: Animal cruelty and Animal death

scanlona's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful inspiring medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fire/Fire injury, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Domestic abuse, Body horror, Gaslighting, Bullying, Child abuse, and Emotional abuse

ameliannelise99's review against another edition

emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racial slurs, Violence, Religious bigotry, Animal cruelty, Xenophobia, and Body horror

tigerkind's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.5

Both praising and criticizing this  feels wrong, as it contains  fairly detailed accounts of abuse. However, it was extremely well written and constructed, allowing for a reflection on the broader systematic workings of power relations in religion, family and education. Even though a memoir, it was at times written with so much detail and emotion that I had to remind myself I was listening to a non-fiction work and not a novel by Barbara Kingsolver. Unfortunately, it feels like the legal challenges the author apparently faced, which forced her to include disclaimers, paraphrase and use pseudonyms, somewhat hampered the overall impact of the story. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fire/Fire injury, Child death, Death, Animal death, Antisemitism, Blood, Car accident, Mental illness, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Grief, Physical abuse, Racism, Religious bigotry, Toxic relationship, Violence, Injury/Injury detail, Racial slurs, Animal cruelty, Body shaming, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Self harm, Sexism, Gaslighting, Body horror, Medical trauma, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Bullying, Child abuse, and Medical content

Moderate: Classism, Slavery, Pregnancy, Gun violence, Cancer, and Terminal illness

Minor: Genocide, Islamophobia, Murder, and Police brutality

erisouls's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

I don’t have the words to explain how profound an experience reading this book was. All I can do is highly recommend it to everyone I know who reads. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Violence, Panic attacks/disorders, Domestic abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Religious bigotry, Toxic relationship, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Misogyny, Blood, Car accident, Abandonment, Animal death, and Body horror