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purplemind's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
Memoirs are a genre I hadn't truly explored until now, so when the book club I've become part of chose this as its monthly read for January, I was torn: on the one hand, I was excited to delve into something new, on the other I was afraid it might turn out to be too dry, relative to the styles I'm used to.
Well. Let me tell you, I needn't have worried. This book, while obviously deepy personal it's also profoundly engaging; maybe it's because it's so personal that it's both difficult to put down once you've started, and daunting to continue reading once you've put it down for a while (you'll notice, I've finished the January read mid-February).
It feels like, in a way, Tara Westover was processing a lot of what had happened to her via writing this book, as her nuanced view of the family she had to leave behind comes into focus the more you go on; it helps that she based a lot ofher recollections on her journal entries of the time (she said this in an interview I've watched since finishing the book), soth her perspectives - young Tara and adult Tara - are always present.
It's a difficult book to read, at times, not because it's hard to understand, but because she goes in depth describing her existence as a little girl inside a family more preoccupied with the End of the World than with the well-being of its children, the gruesome accidents that marked their lives, and the abuse she endured (some physical, some emotional), while obviously trying to humanise the people she loved, to show how the good could for so long outweigh the bad in her mind.
While I understand the central thesis of the book is her education as a means to move on from a path that seemed to have already been decided for her, I do wish she could have given her readers a more rounded idea of what it was like for her to navigate relationships outside her family after BYU and Cambridge, and how her religious beliefs changed since leaving Idaho (again, in one of her interviews she mentions she isn't a practicting Mormon anymore). Then again, this is her life story, so I can't fault her for wanting to tell it on her own terms.
Overall, I'd recommend this book to someone looking for a challenging but engaging read, and I would strongly advise anyone who might find reading about abuse, untreated mental illness and serious injuries upsetting to proceed with caution.
Well. Let me tell you, I needn't have worried. This book, while obviously deepy personal it's also profoundly engaging; maybe it's because it's so personal that it's both difficult to put down once you've started, and daunting to continue reading once you've put it down for a while (you'll notice, I've finished the January read mid-February).
It feels like, in a way, Tara Westover was processing a lot of what had happened to her via writing this book, as her nuanced view of the family she had to leave behind comes into focus the more you go on; it helps that she based a lot ofher recollections on her journal entries of the time (she said this in an interview I've watched since finishing the book), soth her perspectives - young Tara and adult Tara - are always present.
It's a difficult book to read, at times, not because it's hard to understand, but because she goes in depth describing her existence as a little girl inside a family more preoccupied with the End of the World than with the well-being of its children, the gruesome accidents that marked their lives, and the abuse she endured (some physical, some emotional), while obviously trying to humanise the people she loved, to show how the good could for so long outweigh the bad in her mind.
While I understand the central thesis of the book is her education as a means to move on from a path that seemed to have already been decided for her, I do wish she could have given her readers a more rounded idea of what it was like for her to navigate relationships outside her family after BYU and Cambridge, and how her religious beliefs changed since leaving Idaho (again, in one of her interviews she mentions she isn't a practicting Mormon anymore). Then again, this is her life story, so I can't fault her for wanting to tell it on her own terms.
Overall, I'd recommend this book to someone looking for a challenging but engaging read, and I would strongly advise anyone who might find reading about abuse, untreated mental illness and serious injuries upsetting to proceed with caution.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Religious bigotry, Violence, Car accident, Racial slurs, Body shaming, Misogyny, Sexism, Physical abuse, and Mental illness
Moderate: Domestic abuse, Toxic relationship, Animal death, Animal cruelty, and Blood
Minor: Terminal illness, Miscarriage, Death of parent, Death, and Panic attacks/disorders
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