Name: Educated
Rating: 4.529893238434163 (1405 reviews)
ISBN: 9780593105320

Julia Whelan

Tara Westover

A Memoir

Educated

L'educazione

Mariangela

è un libro scorrevole molto bello l'unica cosa è sconcertante essendo una storia vera alcune cose impensabili sono realmente accadute

Tara Westover and her family grew up preparing for the End of Days but, according to the government, she didn’t exist. She hadn’t been registered for a birth certificate. She had no school records because she’d never set foot in a classroom, and no medical records because her father didn’t believe in hospitals.

As she grew older, her father became more radical and her brother more violent. At sixteen, Tara knew she had to leave home. In doing so she discovered both the transformative power of education, and the price she had to pay for it.
source: https://stage-www.penguin.co.uk/books/1112793/educated/9781473539075.html

- I found the beginning slow. It felt unnecessarily dragged. I do see now why the author chose to set the scene but it could have been way better paced. It was hard to continue to be interested and get to the meaty parts of the book. 

- However. Once I did get there, I was at the edge of my seat. My heart was racing. I was so mad. So much to ponder about. Her story, the unfairness of it all, the gaslighting & sexism, the way her own story was retold to her because the truth was inconvenient to her abuser(s). This happens extremely often in abuse and the author has articulated it beautifully. 

- She’s also an objectively good writer outside of the plot of the memoir, so one entire star is just for how eloquent she is in her writing. 

- This memoir also reiterated my belief in the idea that education can single-handedly help humans move up socially, intellectually, and economically by multitudes. It’s the one thing that can almost guarantee a generally better quality of life. I found her journey deeply inspiring. 

Overall, I’d recommend. I tend to find most TikTok-popular books overrated, but this is quite fairly rated. It’s hard to get into, but worth reading. 

Yashmi Adani

- I found the beginning slow. It felt unnecessarily dragged. I do see now why the author chose to set the scene but it could have been way better paced. It was hard to continue to be interested and get to the meaty parts of the book. 

- However. Once I did get there, I was at the edge of my seat. My heart was racing. I was so mad. So much to ponder about. Her story, the unfairness of it all, the gaslighting & sexism, the way her own story was retold to her because the truth was inconvenient to her abuser(s). This happens extremely often in abuse and the author has articulated it beautifully. 

- She’s also an objectively good writer outside of the plot of the memoir, so one entire star is just for how eloquent she is in her writing. 

- This memoir also reiterated my belief in the idea that education can single-handedly help humans move up socially, intellectually, and economically by multitudes. It’s the one thing that can almost guarantee a generally better quality of life. I found her journey deeply inspiring. 

Overall, I’d recommend. I tend to find most TikTok-popular books overrated, but this is quite fairly rated. It’s hard to get into, but worth reading. 

Korean edition of [Educated] by Tara Westover. #1 New York Times bestseller. 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. Korean edition translated by Kim Hee Jeong.

Julie Strietelmeier

I really enjoyed this book. It's been a while since a book captured my attention so much that I thought about it during the times I wasn't reading it. It also made me think about the stories that we re-write in our minds of our past events.

Greg Talbot

“What Reason weaves, by Passion is undone.” ― Alexander Pope, Essay on Man and Other Poems "I am more willing to come out when I get my message from my commander." — David Koresh, cult leader, Waco Texas Massacre “The Indian Princess”, occupies an unshifting beauty, fortress, tyranny and childhood wonder for Tara Westover in her memoir “Educated”. As a child, she describes it as a place to get a way, to be lost when other kids are at school. It seems to represent a place of stability when her father’s dangerous pursuits of chomping off gasoline tanks or machinations to make money stripped from government surveillance. Having no social security number, no connections to community, no path to tradtitional school, Tara finds solace on the mountain. As Tara matures and her worldview expands, so does our portrait of her family. It was hard not for me to see the family as decent misguided libertarians with deep love of family and traditional values. Her father’s rapturous exclamations are hilarious and frightening in their unchallenged form. When Tara describes her mother’s growing interest in muscle testing and unscientific medical ideas, her father says “Them doctors can’t tell what’s wrong just by touching you,” he said, glowing. “But mother can!” Growing up in the wild, there are the expected bumps that occur with living in nature. The brutal unforgiving nature that her life depends on. But there is all the dangerous and blithe religiousity of her uncompromising father. Not believing in education, medicine (no hospitalized births or traditional painkillers), her father becomes a figure of unmatched strength and zealousness. Describing her brother set ablaze when working in the junkyard with her father, she writes it with a sense of beauty and panic. “He went mad with panic and took off, dashing like a marked buck, spreading fire through the sagebrush and wheat grass, which were baked and brittle from the parched summer.” (p.69). The third act of this novel is brilliantly written. The escalations of her family will and her academic pursuit form the dual-edged education. It’s clear to see the benefits of a secular education, but it’s also clear from Tara’s character, and two of her other siblings who also achieved their Ph.D., that the grit and purpose of character came from her family. As her father endured an unfathomable accident...that really seems like only the will of God could have saved him. And her Shawn’s brother’s psychopathology and sexual assaults are brought by Tara, the physical danger and irreparable harm of her family becomes apparent. She writes of her father “The blessing was a mercy. He was offering me the same terms of surrender he had offered my sister. I imagined what a relief it must have been for her, to realize she could trade her reality- the one she shared with me. If I yielded now, I would lose more than an argument. I would lose custody of my own mind. What my father wanted to cast from my wasn’t a demon: it was me (p.304). At one level, I could very much relate to Tara’s story about growing up and still having unresolved family issues. Questions of childhood faith and personal identity just feel like an important part of self-growth. But Tara’s story with all the years of trauma, survivalist mentality and the fortress that her father made in Idaho...it’s just such a warped and peculiar experience. Really enjoyed all the levels of this book, from coming to terms with where you’re from, to finding a morality that you can live with, to questioning authorities and to finding purpose even when you walk it alone.

Dani

Underwhelming for the most part. Pretty interesting and doubtfully real at some points. Found myself reading diagonally some chapters. Mostly the first ones. Nice to see the world from an "uneducated" (indoctrinated) point of view. Makes you wonder.

Jennifer

File this under “Did Not Expect the Illuminati to Show Up In This One” Wow, talk about messed up childhoods and cults. This reminded me of The Sound of Gravel (excellent book if you haven’t already read it) Shawn is the worst. And of course her dad. So messed up. Because the first part is so painful, it felt like it took forever to get through. The pace picked up during Part Two. Also, this made me think of all the women who are into essential oils now. Lol. Part Three is absolutely amazing. What a wonderful writer she is. Wow.

Nadine MacDonald

phenomenal, emotional, relatable, incredible and perfect

Renee Dick

‘An amazing story, and truly inspiring. The kind of book everyone will enjoy. IT’S EVEN BETTER THAN YOU’VE HEARD.’ – Bill Gates Selected as a book of the year by AMAZON, THE TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES, GUARDIAN, NEW YORK TIMES, ECONOMIST, NEW STATESMAN, VOGUE, IRISH TIMES, IRISH EXAMINER and RED MAGAZINE THE MULTI-MILLION COPY BESTSELLER A Book of the Decade, 2010-2020 (Independent) ________________________ Tara Westover and her family grew up preparing for the End of Days but, according to the government, she didn’t exist. She hadn’t been registered for a birth certificate. She had no school records because she’d never set foot in a classroom, and no medical records because her father didn’t believe in hospitals. As she grew older, her father became more radical and her brother more violent. At sixteen, Tara knew she had to leave home. In doing so she discovered both the transformative power of education, and the price she had to pay for it. ________________________ · From one of TIME magazine's 100 most influential people of 2019 · Shortlisted for the 2018 BAMB Readers' Awards · Recommended as a summer read by Barack Obama, Antony Beevor, India Knight, Blake Morrison and Nina Stibbe

The international bestselling memoir

“Educated” is one of the most powerful and painful books I’ve ever read.

It’s a beautifully written memoir about a young woman raised in a radical, isolated family who teaches herself into another life—only to realize that education will cost her the people she loves most.

As Tara’s world expands, the gap between who her family insists she is and who she is becoming grows impossible to bridge.

I felt deeply sad reading this, especially when she finally accepts that to live as an educated, whole person, she has to cut ties with her father—something I understand more than I’d like to admit. It’s a book about memory, abuse, loyalty, and the terrifying freedom of choosing yourself, and it will stay with me for a long time.

"You can love someone and still choose to say goodbye to them. You can miss a person every day, and still be glad that they are no longer in your life.”

“My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs.”

Westover writes with the precision of a historian and the vulnerability of someone still making sense of what happened to her. The prose is clear, unsentimental, and yet incredibly moving—there’s no melodrama, which makes the violence and emotional manipulation land even harder.

One insight: Education here isn’t just degrees and prestige; it’s the slow, painful process of learning to trust your own mind over someone else’s version of reality. Her schooling becomes the lens through which she re-reads her childhood, her religion, and her family story—and that re-reading is as violent, in its own way, as any physical act.

Tara Westover grows up in a radical Mormon survivalist family in rural Idaho, with no formal schooling, no medical care, and a father whose paranoia and extremism shape every part of their lives.

Erwin Lemuel Oliva

“Educated” is one of the most powerful and painful books I’ve ever read.

It’s a beautifully written memoir about a young woman raised in a radical, isolated family who teaches herself into another life—only to realize that education will cost her the people she loves most.

As Tara’s world expands, the gap between who her family insists she is and who she is becoming grows impossible to bridge.

I felt deeply sad reading this, especially when she finally accepts that to live as an educated, whole person, she has to cut ties with her father—something I understand more than I’d like to admit. It’s a book about memory, abuse, loyalty, and the terrifying freedom of choosing yourself, and it will stay with me for a long time.

Some quotes that I highlighted:

"You can love someone and still choose to say goodbye to them. You can miss a person every day, and still be glad that they are no longer in your life.”

“My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs.”

The narrative voice
Westover writes with the precision of a historian and the vulnerability of someone still making sense of what happened to her. The prose is clear, unsentimental, and yet incredibly moving—there’s no melodrama, which makes the violence and emotional manipulation land even harder.


One insight: Education here isn’t just degrees and prestige; it’s the slow, painful process of learning to trust your own mind over someone else’s version of reality. Her schooling becomes the lens through which she re-reads her childhood, her religion, and her family story—and that re-reading is as violent, in its own way, as any physical act.

Tara Westover grows up in a radical Mormon survivalist family in rural Idaho, with no formal schooling, no medical care, and a father whose paranoia and extremism shape every part of their lives.

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 one’s closest 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.

An unexpected read - powerful, honest, and a page-turner from the very beginning

Cassandra Tang

I’ve never felt so understood by a book before. 

Olivia Rousseau 

Kerry McHugh West

A deep reflection on memory, identity, and our relationships with others. The book tells the story of Tara Westover, who, throughout her life, undergoes a process of distancing herself from her family and roots. It explores how, as she seeks a formal education, she faces a rupture with her past and the familiar, while redefining her own identity. Magnificent. 

Educated A Memoir

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