Tara Westover was raised on a mountain in Idaho by survivalist parents who were suspicious of all authority figures and formal establishments. As such, she was born at home with a midwife, never went to a doctor, and never set foot in a school. Her mother used herbalism to treat all illness and injury, her father stockpiled food and fuel for the impending apocalypse, and her education was found in a few books at home and the lectures of her father on the way the world works. (Hint: his ideas on how the world works were full of conspiracy theories.) Despite this isolated upbringing, Tara was able to leave the mountain. She studied for and took the ACT on her own, and managed to gain acceptance to BYU. She went to on graduate from BYU and receive a master’s and a PhD from Cambridge. Educated is her first book.
This book has been getting a lot of buzz, and with good reason. It’s a beautifully written memoir of a girl with an incredible life story. Every single chapter I was left in shock at her living conditions, whether it was the lack of personal hygiene, the holistic medicine used to treat serious injuries, the emotional abuse, the physical abuse. There was a lot going on. For her to come out of that situation as a fairly normal person assimilated into regular society, a person who could write a best-selling book, is nothing short of astounding.
I have always thought that understanding the stories of other people, especially the stories so different from my own, is one of the most valuable uses of my time, and this book was exactly that. Westover does a great job of communicating her complicated relationship with family members: the fear of growing up with them, but also the love they have for each other. This book is really about the process of her estrangement from her parents and some of her siblings, and it’s both heartbreaking and triumphant in equal measure. I was overjoyed when I read about her getting away from the mountain, but also felt her sadness and grief over leaving her family.
Side note: I was very glad for the disclaimer at the beginning of the book that this isn’t about Mormonism, that their brand of religion is very different from the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. There were a few glimmers of similarity with the religious instruction I received in my own childhood, but everything was taken to an unhealthy extreme.
5 stars.
BOOKBURGER 