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A review by the_midnight_librarian
Educated by Tara Westover
5.0
It's difficult for me to put a rating to this, let alone a review. This is someone's life, who am I to put a rating on it? Or tell you what I thought? But here it goes anyway:
Off the bat, this book was difficult, there's domestic violence and manipulation. My heart ached, I got frustrated, I gaped with aw as Tara told her story, her struggle and her perseverance through out her childhood.
I listened to this book on Audible, I felt the narration by Julia Whelan was fantastic, she told the story clear and concise and changed her voice just enough to know when a male spoke verses a female vs Tara herself. However, this book was still hard to listen to, there were times I had to stop and go do something to bring myself out of my head, to bring myself out of a mood I wasn't ok with, because as an outsider listening to her story, it was easy to tell what was abuse, what was manipulation, but to have Tara justify it, to make excuses for it became too much to bear at times. So I did have to stop at times, go calm down and acknowledge that this isn't some fiction, that Tara recognizes it NOW and has done something about it, and that we all would react differently if we were in the same position.
But the book is so much more than that, it has so much more depth in how she over comes not only the domestic violence but the beliefs instilled in her since she was a child, that the education system was "bad" and a tool used by the government. She overcame her insecurities and her mental struggle to choose her family or her education.
By far my favorite book so far in 2018.
Off the bat, this book was difficult, there's domestic violence and manipulation. My heart ached, I got frustrated, I gaped with aw as Tara told her story, her struggle and her perseverance through out her childhood.
I listened to this book on Audible, I felt the narration by Julia Whelan was fantastic, she told the story clear and concise and changed her voice just enough to know when a male spoke verses a female vs Tara herself. However, this book was still hard to listen to, there were times I had to stop and go do something to bring myself out of my head, to bring myself out of a mood I wasn't ok with, because as an outsider listening to her story, it was easy to tell what was abuse, what was manipulation, but to have Tara justify it, to make excuses for it became too much to bear at times. So I did have to stop at times, go calm down and acknowledge that this isn't some fiction, that Tara recognizes it NOW and has done something about it, and that we all would react differently if we were in the same position.
But the book is so much more than that, it has so much more depth in how she over comes not only the domestic violence but the beliefs instilled in her since she was a child, that the education system was "bad" and a tool used by the government. She overcame her insecurities and her mental struggle to choose her family or her education.
By far my favorite book so far in 2018.