Reviews tagging 'Dementia'

Leerschool by Tara Westover

28 reviews

sasshq's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense slow-paced

4.5


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samcsmith's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative reflective tense medium-paced

4.0


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satsumaorange's review against another edition

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challenging emotional sad medium-paced

5.0

Holy cow. What is it with me and reading books at the EXACT right time in my life that I needed to read them? This was phenomenal. Gut-wrenching. Hard to listen to at some points (I listened to the audiobook). It was scary to be in the midst of the deepest, darkest parts of the author's life, and then out of nowhere, she would describe an experience so incredibly specific, but so deeply familiar to my own life, that it caught me completely off guard. This book made me think deeply about what it means to think for yourself. Who do we allow to do our thinking for us? Who do we allow to construct our reality? 

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dlsmk's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense fast-paced

4.5


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cpersin's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0


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iinasomnia's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

3.5


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squarahreads's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative inspiring reflective tense medium-paced

4.75


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scripturient's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective slow-paced

5.0


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leefox's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

5.0


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charley0796's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

4.5

A graphic and heart wrenching story of one woman’s battle to break the chains of psychological abuse and gaslighting. I highly recommend this book! It reads like it was written in the hope her family will read it and believe her, her auntie, Richard and Tyler. 

Going into this book, it was marketed as a story of anti-establishment and mainstream education, all about Tara’s journey to educating and learning. What i wasn’t expecting were the graphic accounts of abuse by her brother and severe gaslighting that altered her memories and left her full of self-doubt many decades later. However, these are no where near as graphic as with other memories I have read and I have come to expect this. I will not mark down for people disclosing their story - but the blurb could definitely be more accurate.
Much of the book is about her inner battles, though how she overcame her self doubt and depression and what she learnt from counselling are missing. I would also have liked to learn more about what she is doing now and her family relationships. 

As a therapist myself, this book really shows the way gaslighting and abuse victims remain stuck in their cycle, through the abuser slowly taking away all escape routes (i.e. financial dependence, threat of ostracising, physical threats etc).  It also shows how schizophrenia or other forms of delusions can be seen through the eyes of the beholder, as absolute and as a need to share their beliefs. It was so saddening to see how much her father followed his delusions, though due to his likely psychosis, there’s no way he could have believed anything different without therapeutic or medical intervention. 



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