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. 

Educated by Tara Westover

Educated by Tara Westover, 334 p. 

CW: family abuse

"Tara Westover was 17 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 in her father's junkyard.
Her father forbade hospitals, 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 one of Tara's older brothers became violent.
Then, lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself. She taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University, where she studied history, learning for the first time about important 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. 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 with severing the closest of ties. 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."--Goodreads blurb

This was an absolutely engrossing memoir of  a child making her way through to adulthood despite family trying to keep her where they thought she belonged. Some of Westover's story seemed almost fantastical, the way some things just worked out for her, but you also know she deserves it from both her hard work and just from taking so much abuse from family. Psychological and physical abuse make you cringe in this story, and make you want to punch people and wrap her in your arms. Beautifully written.