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A review by aslowreader
Educated by Tara Westover
2.0
i spent the entirety of this book wondering if i was enjoying it.
upon completion, i have determined that i still don't know.
this book was nothing like i expected it to be; i anticipated that the author would escape her family/their bullshit much earlier than she did, and without as many naïve trips back to them before going full NC; i had prayed the author would stop making excuses for her abusive and mentally ill father at some point; i had hoped that she would show more growth than in just the last 10% of the book.
also as i wrote this i took another star away bc i really cannot believe that the author, despite all the medical atrocities, mental and physical abuses, complete lack of love and support, and overall what-the-fuckery her family and especially her FATHER and OLDER BROTHER exposed her to over the years, STILL MAKES EXCUSES FOR THEM UNTIL THE BITTER END.
and don't even get me started about the disclaimer at the beginning of the book - "this isn't about religion or politics or w/e" ....... then what exactly is it about? because if it's not your dad's mental illnesses, or his religion, or his politics, what's left??
overall, i think this was a miss for me. i had minimal expectations and it still didn't even come close to meeting them. i'm glad the author was able to get away from her hometown/her family, but she still has a lot of growing and healing to do, it seems.
the one quote i did end up bookmarking:
"I mumbled something about historiography. I had decided to study not history, but historians. I suppose my interest came from the sense of groundlessness I'd felt since learning about the Holocaust and the Civil Rights Movement; since realizing that what a person knows about the past is limited, and will always be limited, to what they are told by others. I knew what it was to have a misconception corrected, a misconception of such magnitude that shifting it shifted the world. Now, I needed to understand how the great gatekeepers of history had come to terms with their own ignorance and partiality. I thought if I could accept that what they had written was not absolute, but was the result of a biased process of conversation and revision, maybe I could reconcile myself with the fact that the history most people agreed upon was not the history I had been taught. Dad could be wrong, and the great historians Carlyle and Macaulay and Trevelyan could be wrong, but from the ashes of their dispute, I could construct a world to live in. In knowing the ground was not ground at all, I hoped I could stand on it."
[punctuation may not be as in book, since i transcribed from the audiobook. the words are the author's, however.]
upon completion, i have determined that i still don't know.
this book was nothing like i expected it to be; i anticipated that the author would escape her family/their bullshit much earlier than she did, and without as many naïve trips back to them before going full NC; i had prayed the author would stop making excuses for her abusive and mentally ill father at some point; i had hoped that she would show more growth than in just the last 10% of the book.
also as i wrote this i took another star away bc i really cannot believe that the author, despite all the medical atrocities, mental and physical abuses, complete lack of love and support, and overall what-the-fuckery her family and especially her FATHER and OLDER BROTHER exposed her to over the years, STILL MAKES EXCUSES FOR THEM UNTIL THE BITTER END.
and don't even get me started about the disclaimer at the beginning of the book - "this isn't about religion or politics or w/e" ....... then what exactly is it about? because if it's not your dad's mental illnesses, or his religion, or his politics, what's left??
overall, i think this was a miss for me. i had minimal expectations and it still didn't even come close to meeting them. i'm glad the author was able to get away from her hometown/her family, but she still has a lot of growing and healing to do, it seems.
the one quote i did end up bookmarking:
"I mumbled something about historiography. I had decided to study not history, but historians. I suppose my interest came from the sense of groundlessness I'd felt since learning about the Holocaust and the Civil Rights Movement; since realizing that what a person knows about the past is limited, and will always be limited, to what they are told by others. I knew what it was to have a misconception corrected, a misconception of such magnitude that shifting it shifted the world. Now, I needed to understand how the great gatekeepers of history had come to terms with their own ignorance and partiality. I thought if I could accept that what they had written was not absolute, but was the result of a biased process of conversation and revision, maybe I could reconcile myself with the fact that the history most people agreed upon was not the history I had been taught. Dad could be wrong, and the great historians Carlyle and Macaulay and Trevelyan could be wrong, but from the ashes of their dispute, I could construct a world to live in. In knowing the ground was not ground at all, I hoped I could stand on it."
[punctuation may not be as in book, since i transcribed from the audiobook. the words are the author's, however.]