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A review by amoghsinha
Educated by Tara Westover
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
5.0
My god. This book is gonna stay with me for a while.
Even though this book is a completely fact-checked memoir, there were many moments throughout the book where I just went, "That's not possible"!
Tara Westover was raised in a Mormon survivalist home on a random hill. Her dad had very non-mainstream views about the government. He believed doomsday was coming, and that the family should interact with the health and education systems as little as possible because they were part of the Illuminati. As a result, she didn’t step foot in a classroom until she was 17, and multiple major medical crises went untreated.
The book completely starts from her beginning and explains her childhood, how she was raised, how they were "homeschooled", her father's antics that will make you question reality, her mother's downward spiral mentally because she suffered a brain injury from a car accident and was never given the medical treatment.
The book also tells the story of her brothers, and Shawn in particular, who very clearly has issues of his own, and how he, on countless occasions assaulted her (not just her, but his mother, wife, and other siblings as well), both mentally and physically but was just labeled as tough love and if she ever tried to raise her voice, she was the one ostracised until she was completely cut off.
It's a story of her determination, her journey to educate herself, from her house to BYU, to Cambridge, Harvard, so much that by the end she was no longer recognizable as the woman who was raised by her parents. She approached them with a new lens, she was able to recognize how her experiences were not normal and were deeply problematic, and for her to recover from it and to "unlearn" or to come to terms with it, is the ultimate purpose of this book.
It's also kind of amazing that even though her family has caused her so much hurt, pain, and suffering, she never really villainizes them. She tries to be as objective as possible. She is never cruel, even when she’s writing about some of her father’s most fringe beliefs, and it's quite evident she mourns the loss of her relationship with her brother Shawn.
By the end, it's just satisfying to see that she's learned to live with the fact that she and the family can never be on the same page, ever. They've become too different, and she should move on. But at the same time, it was amazing to read that she had developed a kind of new family, with her brothers who managed to break the spell of their parents (Tyler and Richard), their wives, and her family from her mother's side. It was extremely heartening to see her develop this new sense of belonging with them.
I am glad I read this book. I don't think I've ever read anything like this. I don't think I ever will.
Even though this book is a completely fact-checked memoir, there were many moments throughout the book where I just went, "That's not possible"!
Tara Westover was raised in a Mormon survivalist home on a random hill. Her dad had very non-mainstream views about the government. He believed doomsday was coming, and that the family should interact with the health and education systems as little as possible because they were part of the Illuminati. As a result, she didn’t step foot in a classroom until she was 17, and multiple major medical crises went untreated.
The book completely starts from her beginning and explains her childhood, how she was raised, how they were "homeschooled", her father's antics that will make you question reality, her mother's downward spiral mentally because she suffered a brain injury from a car accident and was never given the medical treatment.
The book also tells the story of her brothers, and Shawn in particular, who very clearly has issues of his own, and how he, on countless occasions assaulted her (not just her, but his mother, wife, and other siblings as well), both mentally and physically but was just labeled as tough love and if she ever tried to raise her voice, she was the one ostracised until she was completely cut off.
It's a story of her determination, her journey to educate herself, from her house to BYU, to Cambridge, Harvard, so much that by the end she was no longer recognizable as the woman who was raised by her parents. She approached them with a new lens, she was able to recognize how her experiences were not normal and were deeply problematic, and for her to recover from it and to "unlearn" or to come to terms with it, is the ultimate purpose of this book.
It's also kind of amazing that even though her family has caused her so much hurt, pain, and suffering, she never really villainizes them. She tries to be as objective as possible. She is never cruel, even when she’s writing about some of her father’s most fringe beliefs, and it's quite evident she mourns the loss of her relationship with her brother Shawn.
By the end, it's just satisfying to see that she's learned to live with the fact that she and the family can never be on the same page, ever. They've become too different, and she should move on. But at the same time, it was amazing to read that she had developed a kind of new family, with her brothers who managed to break the spell of their parents (Tyler and Richard), their wives, and her family from her mother's side. It was extremely heartening to see her develop this new sense of belonging with them.
I am glad I read this book. I don't think I've ever read anything like this. I don't think I ever will.