Educated by Tara Westover

 Educated by Tara Westover-368 pages in paperback; 10 discs audiobook

I started reading the paperback edition of this a few months back, but got log jammed reading other works. I decided to finish this by listening to the rest on audio cd on my road trip to the MLA Conference. This is a frustrating, harrowing coming-of-age story about a woman who grew up in an eccentric, insane family. Her father was a paranoid zealot Mormon who ruled his household with an iron fist. One of Tara's brothers was an abusive, violent follower of their father. He repeatedly beat up his sister, Tara, over her being, in his words, a whore. This is the story of how Tara finally left her family and was educated at BYU and the University of Cambridge. It's frustrating at times because Tara repeatedly tried to rationalize her family's insanity and beliefs and numerous times tried to rejoin her family's zealotry. She couldn't quite seem to shed her family and their insane beliefs (her father believed the government was run by the Illuminati; he believed hospitals and doctors were evil; he didn't believe in medication; her mother was a homeopathic healer). To illustrate how insane and paranoid her father was I'll paraphrase a story from the book. He was caught in an explosion and badly burned one day and nearly died. However, he refused all medical treatment save for his wife's homeopathic cures. Amazingly, he survived but with permanent defects. He thought this was a mercy from God and a good thing. He also predicted the world would end on Y2K and numerous times thereafter. He also "prophesied" to Tara multiple times that if she didn't recant her ways and statements that God would spite her and a reckoning would come. I can't imagine growing up in a home with such a crazed, paranoid father and an abusive brother. Her mother and many of her other siblings were complicit in this. She had one brother who had previously left the family that was on her side. It would be unbearable to live in these conditions. Somehow, Tara finally got out from under her family's insanity. I would recommend this book to anyone. I really liked reading/listening to it, even though it was frustrating at times, especially when Tara tried to believe her father's insanity after learning that it was in fact insanity.