educated the book reviews

“Educated,” by Tara Westover

I am far from the first critic to recommend Tara Westover’s astounding memoir, “ Educated ,” but if its comet tail of glowing reviews has not yet convinced you, let me see what I can do. Westover was born sometime in September, 1986—no birth certificate was issued—on a remote mountain in Idaho, the seventh child of Mormon survivalist parents who subscribed to a paranoid patchwork of beliefs well outside the mandates of their religion. The government was always about to invade; the End of Days was always at hand. Westover’s mother worked as a midwife and an herbal healer. Her father, who claimed prophetic powers, owned a scrap yard, where his children labored without the benefit of protective equipment. (Westover recounts accidents so hideous, and so frequent, that it’s a wonder she lived to tell her tale at all.) Mainstream medicine was mistrusted, as were schools, which meant that Westover’s determination to leave home and get a formal education—the choice that drives her book, and changed her life—amounted to a rebellion against her parents’ world.

This story, remarkable as it is, might be merely another entry in the subgenre of extreme American life, were it not for the uncommon perceptiveness of the person telling it. Westover examines her childhood with unsparing clarity, and, more startlingly, with curiosity and love, even for those who have seriously failed or wronged her. In part, this is a book about being a stranger in a strange land; Westover, adrift at university, can’t help but miss her mountain home. But her deeper subject is memory. Westover is careful to note the discrepancies between her own recollections and those of her relatives. (The ones who still speak to her, anyway. Her parents cut her off long ago.) “Part of me will always believe that my father’s words ought to be my own,” she writes. If her book is an act of defiance, a way to set the record of her own life straight, it’s also an attempt to understand, even to respect, those whom she had to break away from in order to get free.

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Summary and Reviews of Educated by Tara Westover

Summary | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio

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• Feb 20, 2018, 352 pages
• Feb 2022, 368 pages

• Biography & Memoir
• Wash. Ore. Idaho
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Book Summary

Winner of the 2018 BookBrowse Nonfiction Award An unforgettable memoir about a young girl who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University.

Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her "head-for-the-hills" bag. In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged metal in her father's junkyard. Her father distrusted the medical establishment, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when an older brother became violent. When another brother got himself into college and came back with news of the world beyond the mountain, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. She taught herself enough mathematics, grammar, and science to take the ACT and was admitted to Brigham Young University. There, she studied psychology, politics, philosophy, and history, learning for the first time about pivotal world events like the Holocaust and the Civil Rights Movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she'd traveled too far, if there was still a way home. Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty, and of the grief that comes from severing ties with those closest to you. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes, and the will to change it.

Chapter 1 Choose the Good

My strongest memory is not a memory. It's something I imagined, then came to remember as if it had happened. The memory was formed when I was five, just before I turned six, from a story my father told in such detail that I and my brothers and sister had each conjured our own cinematic version, with gunfire and shouts. Mine had crickets. That's the sound I hear as my family huddles in the kitchen, lights off, hiding from the Feds who've surrounded the house. A woman reaches for a glass of water and her silhouette is lighted by the moon. A shot echoes like the lash of a whip and she falls. In my memory it's always Mother who falls, and she has a baby in her arms. The baby doesn't make sense - I'm the youngest of my mother's seven children - but like I said, none of this happened. A year after my father told us that story, we gathered one evening to hear him read aloud from Isaiah, a prophecy about Immanuel. He sat on our ...

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

• Many of Tara's father's choices have an obvious impact on Tara's life, but how did her mother's choices influence her? How did that change over time?
• Tara's brother Tyler tells her to take the ACT. What motivates Tara to follow his advice?
• Charles was Tara's first window into the outside world. Under his influence, Tara begins to dress differently and takes medicine for the first time. Discuss Tara's conflicting admiration for both Charles and her father.
• Tara has titled her book Educated and much of her education takes place in classrooms, lectures, or other university environments. But not all. What other important moments of "education" were there? What friends, acquaintances, or experiences had ...
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Reader reviews, bookbrowse review.

Westover's incredible story is about testing the limits of perseverance and sanity. Her father may have been a survivalist, but her psychic survival is the most impressive outcome here. Although this memoir represents Westover's own perspective, she strives to be rational and charitable by questioning her own memory and interpretation of events, often looking for outside confirmation from other family members who witnessed the same events. This is one of the most powerful and well-written memoirs I've ever read... continued

(Reviewed by Rebecca Foster ).

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Beyond the Book

Educated author Tara Westover's Idaho family runs Butterfly Express , a successful business selling essential oils and other herbal remedies. Her mother, LaRee Westover, trains herbalists and is the author of a book on herbalism, Butterfly Miracles with Essential Oils . Throughout her childhood, Westover was treated with foraged herbs instead of pharmaceuticals. "For as long as I could remember, whenever I was in pain, whether from a cut or a toothache, Mother would make a tincture of lobelia and skullcap," she writes. "It had never lessened the pain, not one degree. Because of this, I had come to respect pain, even revere it, as necessary and untouchable." It wasn't until she was in college that she tried painkiller pills for the first time....

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Awards & Accolades

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New York Times Bestseller

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by Tara Westover ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 20, 2018

An astonishing account of deprivation, confusion, survival, and success.

A recent Cambridge University doctorate debuts with a wrenching account of her childhood and youth in a strict Mormon family in a remote region of Idaho.

It’s difficult to imagine a young woman who, in her teens, hadn’t heard of the World Trade Center, the Holocaust, and virtually everything having to do with arts and popular culture. But so it was, as Westover chronicles here in fairly chronological fashion. In some ways, the author’s father was a classic anti-government paranoiac—when Y2K failed to bring the end of the world, as he’d predicted, he was briefly humbled. Her mother, though supportive at times, remained true to her beliefs about the subordinate roles of women. One brother was horrendously abusive to the author and a sister, but the parents didn’t do much about it. Westover didn’t go to public school and never received professional medical care or vaccinations. She worked in a junkyard with her father, whose fortunes rose and fell and rose again when his wife struck it rich selling homeopathic remedies. She remained profoundly ignorant about most things, but she liked to read. A brother went to Brigham Young University, and the author eventually did, too. Then, with the encouragement of professors, she ended up at Cambridge and Harvard, where she excelled—though she includes a stark account of her near breakdown while working on her doctoral dissertation. We learn about a third of the way through the book that she kept journals, but she is a bit vague about a few things. How, for example, did her family pay for the professional medical treatment of severe injuries that several of them experienced? And—with some justification—she is quick to praise herself and to quote the praise of others.

Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2018

ISBN: 978-0-399-59050-4

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017

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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

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by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal

by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

From mean streets to wall street.

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

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Spinning a Brutal Off-the-Grid Childhood into a Gripping Memoir

By Tina Jordan

• March 2, 2018
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SCHOOL OF LIFE: Tara Westover’s parents, who practice a radical form of Mormonism, raised seven children off the grid on a remote Idaho mountainside. Home schooling consisted of an occasional morning in the basement flipping through books, nothing more. “Learning in our family was entirely self-directed,” she writes in her memoir, “Educated,” which enters the hardcover nonfiction list at No. 3. “You could learn anything you could teach yourself, after your work was done.” And so Westover — who knew she wanted to leave the mountainside, where she suffered at the hands of an abusive brother — taught herself the subjects she needed to learn to take the ACT. The gaps in her knowledge were enormous: In college, she once raised her hand in class and asked a professor what the Holocaust was. But she persevered and went on to earn a Ph.D. in history from Cambridge University.

To write “Educated,” Westover had to teach herself all over again. “I read a handful of memoirs to get a sense of what the genre meant,” she says. “I needed to learn the fundamentals of the craft. I had never written a word of narrative. What is a tense shift, what is point of view? I didn’t know any of it.”

Westover is estranged from her parents — who turned a blind eye to her brother’s beatings — and some of her siblings. “We think love is noble, and in some ways it is,” she says. “But in some ways it isn’t. Love is just love. And sometimes people do terrible things because of it.” The rest of her family supports her: “They understood why I needed to tell the story; I think they even thought it might have some value to others.”

But when she wrote “Educated,” Westover wasn’t thinking of others. “I wrote the book I wished I could have given to myself when I was losing my family,” she says simply. “When I was going through that experience, I became aware of how important stories are in telling us how to live — how we should feel, when we should feel proud, when we should feel ashamed. I was losing my family, and it seemed to me that there were no stories for that — no stories about what to do when loyalty to your family was somehow in conflict with loyalty to yourself. And forgiveness. I wanted a story about forgiveness that did not conflate forgiveness with reconciliation, or did not treat reconciliation as the highest form of forgiveness. In my life, I knew the two might always be separate. I didn’t know if I would ever reconcile with my family, and I needed to believe that I could forgive, regardless.”

Follow Tina Jordan on Twitter: @TinaJordanNYT

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By Tara Westover

Book review, full book summary and synopsis for Educated by Tara Westover, a personal journey about a childhood in a survivalist home.

Educated is a memoir by Tara Westover, a woman who grows up as the youngest of seven in a rural Idaho Mormon community. She and her siblings were all born at home and are homeschooled, and her parents are deeply suspicious of the government. Her father fears the influence of the Illuminati, thought that Y2K would be the harbinger of the Second Coming, and believes public education standards are just brainwashing.

The story is told in three parts. Part One details her childhood. Westover describes her father's radicalization and the many serious (and often gruesome) injuries that her family members refuse to get medial treatment for.

In Part Two, Westover ventures to college at BYU. She describes the culture shock of being confused about what the Holocaust was or having to learn about slavery, and she struggles through her first romantic relationship. Finally in Part Three, Westover goes to Cambridge for her PhD, attempts to confront her family about their issues and brings us up to date with her life now.

(The Full Plot Summary is also available, below)

Full Plot Summary

Tara Westover grows up with in an unconventional way (no birth certificates, no medical records, etc.). She and her siblings have been raised on a mountaintop in Idaho.

Her family lives in a Mormon community, and her father, Gene , is a survivalist. He believes in self-sufficiency. His dogma becomes entrenched after an incident where the neighbors were attacked by the government. Her mother, Faye , is the town’s midwife, a practice that is illegal in Idaho. Faye had a very normal upbringing, and Tara believes Faye married Gene as rebellion against it.

Tara and her sibling don't have proper schooling, medical care and the like. When Faye is in a serious accident during the move to Idaho, she doesn't receive medical treatment, and she has chronic headaches after that. Gene is against schooling, but Tara’s oldest brother Tyler ends up going to college anyway. Tara decides she needs to go, too.

Tara also recalls an incident where her brother Luke gets burned, though he family’s recollection of what happened is all different. It's one of many incidences where there's discrepancies among her family about what happened growing up. When Y2K approaches, Gene starts getting preoccupied with preparing for Y2K and is depressed when nothing happens.

Tara has a caring relationship with her brother Shawn in some ways, but Shawn also has a dangerousness to him, and he can be mean, controlling, physically and emotionally abusive and violent. Meanwhile, Tyler encourages Tara to go to college. Young Tara wants to change her life. She takes the ACT and is accepted into BYU. Her father is firmly against it and continues to be volatile and dangerous. Her mother and other family members discreetly try to encourage her.

At BYU, Tara settles into her new, strange life. She experiences culture shock as well as difficulties in school since she is far behind the other students going in. When Tara returns home for the summer, she starts hanging out with a boy from town, Charles , and starts to see her previous life as being a little backwards. Gene and Shawn think she’s become "uppity" and call her names. Tara gets a headache, Charles gives her an ibuprofen, and Tara is shocked to experience medicine that actually works (as opposed to the home remedies she's accustomed to).

She's also stressed from financial and academic pressures, and her friends have to help her with her personal hygiene. When Charles visits her home sees the hostile, abusive environment, he feels in over his head and breaks things off with her. The church Bishop at school is supportive of Tara and tries to help her with her. He encourages her to apply for a grant, which later comes through.

During an introductory psychology course, Tara realizes that Gene likely has bipolar disorder. She starts learns the truth of the event (Ruby Ridge incident) from child. It was a drug raid, but Gene had believed the government attacked that family for their beliefs. Meanwhile, at home, Gene gets into a bad accident, and the family cares for him for weeks. When he finally heals, it strengthens Faye and Gene's beliefs that traditional medical treatment is unnecessary.

Tara decides to study abroad at Cambridge. Her professor takes an interest in her and encourages to believe in herself. When she graduates, she decides to pursue a Master’s Degree at Cambridge. As Tara begins her PhD program and after more culture shock, Tara finally starts feeling like she’s fitting in at Cambridge. On the home front, she also attempts to confront her family about Shawn's behavior. Audrey and Tara discuss Shawn's abusive behavior, but it results in more violent and angry outbursts from Shawn. When nothing changes, Tara talks to her father who refuses to believe her, and Faye tries to convince Tara her memories are wrong. Shawn says he's cutting Tara out of his life, and soon Audrey recants and cuts Tara out as well.

Tara finally tells them goodbye and walks out. Tara’s work on her PhD suffers, but she’s able to get back on track when Tyler surprisingly supports her. Tara gets her PhD. In the final chapters, Tara goes home after a long absence, but has not reconciled with her parents.

The book ends with Tara reflecting on her fractured family. When Faye's mother passes away, Tara goes to the funeral, but sits apart from them. Shawn does not look at Tara during the service. As of the publication of the book many years later, the funeral is the last time Tara has seen her parents.

For more detail, see the full Section-by-Section Summary .

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Book Review

Educated , by Tara Westover, was one of the bestselling books on 2018 and has continued to top the charts even now, despite being released over a year ago. I put it on my to-read list thanks to Bill Gate’s book blog , and Ellen Degeneres read it after Michelle Obama recommended it to her.

Point is, if you’re reading this book, at least you know you’re in good company.

( Update 8/2020 : LaRee Westover — “Faye” in the book, the mother of Tara Westover, has written a book called “Educating” that’s partially a response to Educated. She’s crowdfunding it on Indiegogo . )

Educated opens with an episode from Westover’s childhood. She is six years old. As it was explained to her, a nearby family, the Weavers, has been under siege and shot at by the government for being “freedom fighters,” resulting in the deaths of the mom and a 14-year-old boy. (In reality, the Weavers were in a raid gone awry for possessing illegal weapons .) It’s a formative experience, marking the point where her father starts to transform into a radicalized survivalist, and Westover wonders in the book a few times what he would have been like if she’d known him before that.

Westover writes that “four of my parents’ seven children don’t have birth certificates. We have no medical records because we were born at home and have never seen a doctor or nurse. We have no school records because we’ve never set foot in a classroom.”

Author Tara Westover

The Good Stuff

Educated is a fascinating book on multiple levels. As a personal journey for Westover, it’s triumphant and hopeful. Westover goes from receiving very little education to eventually getting her PhD at Cambridge.

As a story, it’s unique. Westover’s experiences make for a distinctive perspective, accented with colorful anecdotes.

And as a reader, it’s interesting to consider how her perspective is shaped by the usual fallacies of memory and perspective.

For example, as I was reading, I wondered if the event she describes in the first chapter was as dramatic as she believes, or if the drama of it was heightened by being told about it at a young age and slowly building a mythos out of it. How would she have viewed her father if no one had ever later described the scene to her?

Some Criticisms and Caveats

To be honest, Educated is not the type of book I would’ve selected if it weren’t for its overwhelming popularity. It’s highly personal and not a topic I’m particularly interested in. But the story was compelling enough that I found myself invested in it, even if it did drag in a few parts.

I couldn’t help feeling, though, that perhaps Westover wrote this book too soon. It seems like the story we’re reading is the one she’s constructed to make sense of everything that happened to her, but I imagine she still has a longer journey to really process it all and what it means.

Some parts of the book, especially when it comes to her own behavior seem too neat and tidy to be the whole story. When her father offers her a blessing, she responds “I love you. But I can’t. I’m sorry, Dad” and he just walks out of the room. Scenes like that feel more like a made-for-TV movie than the truth.

When the book concludes, things are essentially unresolved with her family. I would be surprised if that’s where their story ends, even if they made some big mistakes.

Educated vs. Hillbilly Elegy

There have been a number of comparisons of Educated with J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy , but they’re fairly different books. Hillbilly Elegy is a much more political book that’s trying to explain the economic conditions impacting white working-class Appalachian communities. Meanwhile, though Westover’s memoir involves a family that is geographically rooted in Trumpland, her story isn’t meant to be representative of Trump voters or even of her Mormon community in Southern Idaho.

Westover’s father has more radical views than most in their religious community. He firmly believes women shouldn’t work, and he’s a survivalist, busy hoarding food and being paranoid about potential attacks from the government and whatnot. Westover discusses how he likely has an untreated personality disorder.

Read it or Skip It?

I enjoyed parts of Educated. It’s an inherently interesting story, and one that’s worth telling.

It’s not a book I would have normally chosen for myself if it weren’t for all the glowing endorsements, but I’m glad I gave it a shot. For me, it didn’t quite live up to the hype, but I do feel like I got something out of her story.

Have you read this book or would you consider reading it? See Educated on Amazon .

Tara Westover’s Family and Responses to Educated

I went through a lot of the comments that her family has made publicly (on Facebook, Amazon, and Goodreads, etc.) about the book, and it seems Westover’s family members have been vocal about their disagreement (“lies”, according to them) with some of the parts of the book. However, throughout Educated, Westover often acknowledges the question marks in her memories, and it seems like they mostly take issue with the overall portrayal as opposed to disputing specific facts.

To be fair, it does seem like her family members are not quite the bumpkins she makes them out to be. At one point in the book, her mom has to force her dad’s hand in getting a phone line installed, for example. However, in reality they don’t seem as backwards — they run a business and are pretty active on Facebook and whatnot. Her mom comments frequently on the book.

Tara gives many of her family monikers in the book, but in actuality her parents are Val (“ Gene “) and LaRee Westover (“ Faye “). “Shawn” is the nickname for Travis. (Tyle, Richard and Luke Westover are referred to by their actual names in the book.) Her older sister Valaree (“ Audrey “) and her mother run an essential oils business together. It has a Facebook , Instagram and even a YouTube channel. They even sell a book about essential oils . The family’s lawyer claims it has 30 employees, multiple facilities and relies on an automated assembly line ( PDF version in case that link goes down).

On the other hand, it’s worth mentioning that her brother — or at least someone claiming to be him — Tyler (real name) has come out with extensive comments that don’t seem to contradict the book. He noted some inaccuracies in her perceptions ( PDF version ), but seems to corroborate large parts of the story. Also, Richard (also his real name)’s profile on his university’s website ( PDF version ) corroborates the spotty education they received as kids: “Westover said he is probably the only ISU masters-level chemist who had to start with a beginning math course at ISU.”

In the comments of one of the articles linked above, Richard Westover has also responded to the book with the following:

“The relationship between my sister and my parents, like that of many poeple, is more complicated than either this article or the book can portray. Tara is doing the best she can with what she knows and I give her kudos as well for that. I think people reading either the book or the article should suspend judgement. Having read both, and lived through it as well, I would not consider myself in possesion of the facts tsufficient to pass judgement to the extent many of the commenters seem to be willing to do. To you it is a book and it is cheap to rant about it. To me, it is my life and I’m still living it. Tara comes to my house to visit occasionally and I still call my parents every week.”

Important Note : While they seem to want to share their side of the story, its seems sad that many people have taken that as an invitation to harass her family. As a reminder, they’re private citizens responding to a story about themselves. John Oliver did a fantastic piece on public shaming . He discusses how it’s often a useful tool, but also how it can be abused. I hope no one reads this book and thinks that the main takeaway should be “I need to go harass these private citizens / people I don’t know RIGHT NOW.”

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Read the first pages of Educated

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48 comments

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Great review!!

thank you! and thanks for dropping by!

I really liked Educated but I see what you mean by saying there will probably be more to the story. Really thorough review!

I can see why people liked it so much for sure, I think I probably had unrealistic expectations reading it this late in the game — thanks for dropping by!

Great review of the book, both of its attributes and its faults. I think the book treads an often invisible line of reporting memories versus reporting facts, and I appreciated that Westover was open about the possibility that the two might not be the same for her. The book really spoke to me as an educator who possesses a fair amount of privilege, but I think we can all learn something about the importance of not writing people off as lost causes simply because they are ignorant. I’m glad you found some value in her story, even if you didn’t love it. (It’s so easy to be disappointed by such great hype!)

Thank you, Veronica! I agree, I liked that she is really open about admitting that she’s only recounting her memories of what happened. And yes! I think it’s so true that there’s a lot of valuable lessons to be learned from her story. I’m glad people are reading it. Honestly, I think it’s just in certain parts where I knew where the story was headed (I’d heard her talk about the book before reading it, etc.), I got a little bit bored once I sort of had the gist of what was going on (but I think that’s just my own impatience). Plus with all the hype, I had like CRAZY expectations, haha. Thank you for your insightful comments!

Loved the review!

Thank you! And thanks for reading!

Great review. You really dug into the background. You made some good points about how soon this was written after. I do usually think it takes some time to make sense of our past.

Thank you catherine!

Terrific review, thanks

thank you! :)

very nice review!!

thank you very much! :)

I heard about this book. I need to read it but I fear it might break my heart before I get to the end so I have to gear myself up for it. Really a well-written write/up. I hope the author sees your post.

Thank you so much and thanks for reading!

Very thoughtful review. Thanks!

Thank you, much appreciated!

Great review! I have been wanting to read this book for so long now, but just end up choosing something else always for some reason.

Thank you! Hope you enjoy it if you get a chance to read it!

The waitlist for this book is nuts. I feel like I’ve been waiting forever. I love stories about people who grow up in unusual situations, so I think I’ll like this one. Great review!

oh yes, if that’s what interests you, I definitely think you should read it! Thanks for dropping by! Hope you get off the waitlist soon! :)

Been thinking about reading this one for a while now, thank you for the great review!

thank you! hope you like it if you get a chance to read it!

Excellent review! Although it’s not a book I would usually be drawn to, your review made me curious enough to give it a try.

That’s great to hear, thank you!

Your review of Educated was the most honest of all the ones I’ve read. Thank you!

Are Educated and Hillbilly Elegy novels? I thought they were biographical memoirs and considered non fiction. maybe that’s where people get caught up in trying to find out if it’s true or not. If it’s a novel, then just take as a story, not the truth.

I can’t wait to read it.

Fantastic articulation of a story that has something for everyone. With or without the abusive factor, I felt she told her story in a way that would benefit anyone’s family situation. The abusive factors, the dangers inherent in the working situations she experienced as a child, only added to our insights into these relationships. So many episodes in the book gave me personal emotions, but one favorite scene is when Tara is on the rooftop in england with her professor and her classmates. The wind is fierce and would scare anyone. Tara walks up to edge of roof, standing as if there is no wind and has no fear. Her professor comes near her and observes how her classmates are huddled together in the middle of the roof, bent forward and facing sideways so the wind won’t sweep them away. Tara, for all her differences growing up, stands like a superman in front of the other girls.

Her stories, like the roof scene, weave together a larger story of a life filled with unique experiences that might bring anyone to their knees. She survives all this in such a way that she shows all of us that, if we stick to it and really try, we can be supermen, too. Thank you, Tara, for sharing your love and strength. Beautiful book.

I enjoyed your review until you commented that the crazy Westover’s radical beliefs were firmly in Trumpland. Really?? What on earth do their views have to do with the average Trump supporter? You, obviously have no idea.

Hi Karen, I write in the review that their family is located in Trumpland (as in, located in an area where people generally support Trump) but their beliefs are NOT representative and are actually considered extreme, even for their community.

Hope this clears things up. Best, Jenn

Loved the book but very upset with the people in Preston. Why didn’t they step in to help her and why didn’t someone do something about “Shawn”? Preston is a small town where everyone knows everyone’s business. I know as I grew up in several small towns in southern Idaho. I admire Tara with what she has down with her life.

I was impressed with the book because I personally relate to it. Like Tara, I lacked a high school education and BYU gave me a chance no one else would have. I am even more impressed when I have listened to her interviews. She is in the same position that I have been my entire life. I know good people on both sides of our divided country and we desperately need intelligent people like Tara to be able to discourse with both side and bring reason to our crumbling society.

I agree with Karen. Labeling an area of the country “Trumpland” reeks of a kind of racism. Albeit not the most common kind, but in my opinion still shows ignorance. Trump has actually gotten some pretty important things done in our country. Do your research.

How would it be racism, also read the reviewers reply, it clears up what she meant

I read this a few years ago, right after it came out. Her mother is releasing her side of the story this coming year and I just pre-ordered it. I own one of LaRee’s books already, and buy her products on a regular basis. Her mother is nothing short of incredible, even if her father is possibly insane. Because of LaRee’s new book, I have revisited Tara’s book. This review is much better than most of the reviews I have read, and interviews I have watched. Thank you for that. I am very frustrated at most readers’ inability to see what this book is about. It is not about “Mormonism” or homeschooling or education or natural medicine at all. It is about mental illness and abuse. Her focus on being off the grid, Mormon, and homeschooled or unschooled takes away from the real story. I feel like all of the interviews I have watched have focused on the fact that she was born at home, unschooled (which is what she was, yet no one has done enough research before an interview to name it as such), and never went to the doctor. There are a great many families that practice natural medicine and unschool that don’t need her form of “education”. I unschool my children, practice natural medicine and am a Latter Day Saint. We also live in Idaho and are self employed. I have many friends who choose the same lifestyle. However, my children are very confident, know they are safe and loved, and have had very magical childhoods free from the pressures of school. So far we have one college graduate. We belong to several homeschool groups and have a rich life free from the restraint of the mainstream. She generalizes the the movements that she attacks. Her interviews make me sick. She ignores the horrible parts of her life in the book and focuses on the lack of “education”. Her unschooling and being un-vaxed had nothing to do with her trauma. Thank you for focusing on the trauma and seeing the book for what it truly is.

I just finished Educated and it was great. It is hard to believe what some children have to live through to become adults. It appears to me that Tara has done a great job of raising and educating herself. She reminds me of Jeanette Walls from the Glass Castle. Great informative review.

I just finished the book last night and your review was spot on. I didn’t think I would get into it the way I did but it definitely held my interest

An interesting review. As a child of an emotionally abusive parent (who now swears she doesn’t remember half of the things her kids recount to her) I can easily see where the disconnect between Tara and her parents’ narrative lies. As a child we miss intention behind parents’ action. As a parent we miss the impact. The truth likely lies somewhere in between. But – and this is obviously a bias of my own experience – I know I believe none of her story was concocted.

Hey, thanks for your thoughts. That’s definitely a useful perspective to consider as well. I appreciate you sharing your comment!

I just finished the book and so appreciate d Tara’s story. This is a personal account of one person’s struggle to understand, deal with and overcome abuse from within a family. Is is fair for any of us to judge her journey through this? Why does it matter? I commend this young woman for examining herself, her life and her worth in it. Her willingness to offer this story to anyone who may need to hear it is truly a gift. If it speaks to you in some way, drink it in. If not, let it pass over you. This is art.

thank you for this post! i love it

thanks umi!

Hi and thank you for inviting my thoughts here. Having a little extra time on my hands recently has allowed me to revisit some of the themes explored in Educated. It’s funny because I recently sought out some perspectives on the book from a few sites. Bill Gates’ perspective mostly focuses on Tara’s ability to be self taught. He emphasizes how impressive Tara is and rightly so. Having been brought up without access to any sort of education, her tenacity and intrinsic motivation to learn and become educated are truly mind-blowing. And as important as this particular theme is to both Tara personally, and the theme of education itself, it is not what made me consider Educated over and over for the past year.

The other theme, as many of you may know, is mental illness and how it can truly destroy family members, and eventually destroy not just the family dynamic, but the family as a permanent institution. Along with the mental illness and abuse, I found myself personally recognizing and feeling a very sad connection to the constant denial and enabling, as well as the crushing betrayal and eventual decision on Tara’s part to break ties with family members. This is where I really connected with Tara. If there were a support group for people who have either been abandoned by family members or who have been forced to end relationships with family members, I think maybe people like Tara and I would truly benefit. From my perspective, it’s your worst nightmare. You never really make a clean break from even the most mentally ill and/or abusive siblings. You think about them and worry about them, even though you know there’s nothing left that you can do. It is a pain that is truly debilitating. I sincerely thank Tara for the time and hard work that went into sharing her story. No one likes to feel that they are the only one who has ever experienced a particular kind of tragic loss. There are support groups for grieving, but not for this kind of grief. Alas, Educated helped me to see that I am not walking this path alone. For some of us, family is not forever.

Tara Westover’s story is extraordinary. It is remarkable that three of the off spring went on to receive PhDs.. It is sad and disturbing that “Shawn” never received the mental help he needed. There is a thread if mental illness that runs through the family.. Congrats to Tara for overcoming such difficulties. I think there may be more to come.

This was my first book of 2022. It was eye-opening for me to say the least. While I think it is told from Tara’s perspective, I wish to remind everyone that for a person to share the truth of their family life requires great courage and is often sugar coated. It is an extremely difficult thing to do. Thank you Tara for being so brave. Your courage has given me strength 🙏🏻

Educated Is a Brutal, One-of-a-Kind Memoir

Tara Westover's coming-of-age story follows her upbringing in a survivalist family, and her decision to leave that life behind.

T ara Westover’s one-of-a-kind memoir is about the shaping of a mind, yet page after page describes the maiming of bodies—not just hers, but the heads, limbs, and torsos of her parents and six siblings, too. The youngest child in a fundamentalist Mormon family living in the foothills of Buck’s Peak, in Idaho, she grew up with a father fanatically determined to protect his family against the “brainwashing” world. Defending his isolated tribe against the physical dangers—literally brain-crushing in some cases—of the survivalist life he imposed was another matter.

Westover, who didn’t set foot in school until she left home in adolescence, toiled at salvaging scrap in his junkyard, awaiting the end days and/or the invading feds her father constantly warned of. Neither came. Nor, amazingly, did death or defeat, despite grisly accidents. Terrified, impaled, set on fire, smashed—the members of this clan learned that pain was the rule, not the exception. But succumbing was not an option, a lesson that ultimately proved liberating for Westover.

In briskly paced prose, she evokes a childhood that completely defined her. Yet it was also, she gradually sensed, deforming her. Baffled, inspired, tenaciously patient with her ignorance, she taught herself enough to take the ACT and enter Brigham Young University at 17. She went on to Cambridge University for a doctorate in history.

For Westover, now turning 32, the mind-opening odyssey is still fresh. So is the soul-wrenching ordeal—she hasn’t seen her parents in years—that isn’t over.

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