I loved this book.
I listen to my audio books in the car driving my dog to and from doggie daycare twice a week, so I normally go a few days between 'reading' the audio books. For this one, however, I was listening to it on my phone in my house. I would put it on when I made dinner, would play it outside when I was gardening, I would try to get it in any time I had a decent chunk of time to listen. The story, combined with Westover's writing style was the perfect match for me.
Educated is Tara Westover's journey from rural Idaho and her parents who didn't believe in doctors or the school system to Harvard and Cambridge. What I thought was going to be a story of someone who grew up in a sheltered and religious homeschooling environment expanding her horizons turned into one of the best stories of survival, personal growth, and basically cult deprogramming. The aspect I loved the most about the book was how Westover just lays out her story as simple facts about how she grew up. She doesn't often pass judgement on her parents for their beliefs or their actions. As the reader, there were times when I was in pure disbelief about how her parents could do (or not do) certain things. A gruesome injury was treated with natural remedies at home instead of the emergency room, for example. But since Westover grew up in that culture from the time she was born, she presents it as that is how things were done. We do get some tension from outside point of view such as Westover's grandparents disagreeing with how they were being raised, but nothing too drastic.
What I think made this book different from other memoirs that I've attempted to read over the years is that Westover goes about her story telling in a very deliberate manner. She tells the story chronologically from when she was young all the way through her college career. The first half of the book is her recounting tales from her childhood - many of which were funny and charming and really gave a sense that she loved growing up the way she did. She seems to have fond memories of playing with her siblings on their farm and exploring the mountains and woods on their property. As Westover grows up, the stories gradually become darker and worrisome. It feels like not only does she remember or understand more as she grows older, but also that her parents (father, specifically) start really ramping up the survivalist panic of preparing for the end of the world or the government to come knocking. The tension is slowly but continually cranked up, injuries or repercussions of actions get increasingly severe, and the family starts to fracture as the children grow up and start making their own choices. This increasing tension was great at encouraging the reader to keep going we think on one hand that there isn't any way it could get worse than what just happened but we know it will probably get worse. And it does. My goodness, it gets so much worse than I would have imagined.
Another aspect in which Educated really raised the bar for memoirs is the emotion that Westover shows throughout the book. In other memoirs I've started, they almost feel clinical. Like the author is just relaying a string of facts about what happened. Seeing Westover start to challenge her belief system, at first internally, but then also externally later was extremely compelling. The struggles with mental health and trying to find her place between these two worlds - her family home and academia - was fantastic yet heartbreaking to read. While in college, she slowly started to realize the extent to which her education growing up was unorthodox and she works hard to reconcile her childhood with what she's learning. She wants to have both - have her family and her education - and for a while, she does manage it. However, the two become increasingly at odds and Westover is often forced to choose between them.
One aspect I would have liked more of is her adjusting initially to her time in University. I felt like the front side of the book where we got her childhood and growing up, which is absolutely necessary. But once she got to college, I would have liked more of a sense on what that culture shock was like. We do get some examples, but they felt a bit too glazed over for my liking. Growing up, she wasn't completely cut off from society or anything. They still went into town for certain things, but any college student leaving home for the first time is going to have some growing pains trying to figure out the dining hall, laundry machines, or library system.
Trigger warning: abuse.
The physical and emotional abuse Westover suffers throughout the book by different people in her life is hard to read but reading her rationale of it and having her explain it away so many times is heartbreaking. As someone who grew up being taught that domestic violence was not okay, reading the extent to what Westover went through combined with the reactions by her family members was infuriating. It is easy to look at Westover's situation and judge. Judge her parents, her family, or even her religion as being the cause of trauma or problems in her life. However, Westover presents her story in a way that doesn't pass judgement or blame entirely on one side. Instead, she tries to deal with the abuse in her own ways that evolve over the course of the book. The abuse become the catalyst to Westover making the most dramatic change to her life at the end of the book.
Overall, a compelling read of one girl's incredible journey away from everything she knows in order to learn more about the outside world. The structure of the memoir really enhances the reading experience by slowly increasing tension, expanding the world, and giving depth to the eventual hard decisions that need to be made at the end.
For a non-reader of non-fiction, this memoir hooked me from the beginning right through to the end and I'm still in awe at a few stories Westover shares in the book.
Also, for the record, my mom loved it as well.
334 pages
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