Having recently read Rebecca Stott’s ‘Days of Rain’, another memoir about growing up within a restrictive religious group might have been a little too much. Not so. This is a brilliant exposition of metaphorical and literal journeying from a family’s world so saturated in abuse and ignorance that it is normalised to a life in which the individual fights to win scholarships and university places where she is encouraged to blossom and grow intellectually and emotionally, something made all the more extraordinary by the fact that Tara Westover never went to school and spent most days helping out her father in his highly dangerous scrapyard, avoiding the most serious of physical injuries by luck rather than any health and safety practice!
If you pick up ‘Educated’ expecting to be tutored in and shocked by the unfamiliar (to most of us) doctrine of Mormonism, you will be disappointed. This is not a memoir which excoriates any one faith system and we see pretty quickly that Tara’s father’s beliefs are not in any way the norm within the Mormon community. Suffering from bipolar disorder, he is delusional, passionate, at times downright dangerous and often depressed. He controls his family with an iron will and as Tara struggles to free herself of guilt when disobeying her father and, in particular, tries to break away from her brother Shawn’s coercive and often brutal behaviour, it takes her years to make peace with the notion that she will have to walk away from some family members if she is to ever be true to her real self. This memoir is a superb study in how even very able, talented, curious and sensitive people can be brainwashed into behaving in self-destructive ways when a society’s patriarchal rules encourage all-encompassing power to be wielded with little regard for the law.
Tara Westover describes traumatic events without resorting to gratuitous description. She is careful not to take the easy route of applying ‘monster’ and ‘redeemer’ labels because she knows that life is much more complicated. Throughout the depictions of all of her suffering – both physical and mental – there is no self-pity and this makes the tale all the stronger. A wonderful exposition on love, loyalty, terror and guilt, and, eventually, self-belief and inner strength.
My thanks to NetGalley and Random House New York for an e-copy of this book in exchange for a fair review.

A fascinating story about a girl who grows up with a religious fanatical family. Growing up with a complete lack of understanding about even the simplest of life skills and knowledge she has no birth certificate and does not exist in any records of normal life. It is a difficult read due to descriptions of violence, cruelty and ignorance. However, the strength of Tara is amazing and following her incredible journey to self educate herself is truly rewarding.

Tara Westover had a harrowing upbringing, as the seventh child in a fundamentalist Mormon family in the backwoods of Idaho. Her childhood and teenage years were peppered with car accidents, work accidents, and other mental and physical trauma and abuse.

Despite all that and despite lacking any education and she was never sent to school or homeschooled, she ends up getting a college education and eventually, a pHD at Cambridge University in the UK.

The writing style, some niggling gaps in the story and some things that didn't quite add up kept me at a distance, so I never really got a sense of who Tara Westover really was.

Educated was a horrifying and compelling read. Westover's memoir is centred around the idea of the 'education' which took her from a junkyard in Idaho to Oxford and Harvard, and her achievements are particularly astonishing given that her first experience of formal education was at undergraduate level, and that her family life was heartbreakingly violent.

Her family's dysfunction is presented in chilling detail through a narrative voice which combines her childhood acceptance of the trauma she endured and her adult rejection of it. These different perspectives mean the story seems disjointed or incomplete in places, perhaps because the events are still relatively recent and Westover has not fully come to terms with them.

The main issue I had with this book was the balance, or lack of balance, between the terrifying events of Tara Westover's childhood and her dazzling academic achievements. The sheer weight of abuse, violence and trauma was overwhelming at times, and I was disappointed that in comparison, her experiences and achievements in education, from the early days reading books at home to her work as a PhD student were undeveloped - I would have loved to read more about this.

This unforgettable memoir tells of a young woman's off-grid upbringing in Idaho and the hard work that took her from almost complete ignorance to a Cambridge PhD.

Tara Westover had the kind of upbringing most of us can only imagine. She was the youngest of seven children raised in Buck Peak, Idaho by Mormon parents who distrusted the federal government and anticipated the end of days. Her father refused to register his children's births, so Westover had no birth certificate or knowledge of her exact birthday. Westover's dad also rejected formal education, so none of his children attended school. They could study at home from a meager selection of textbooks if they chose, but their father valued practical skills more. He put Westover to work in his junkyard, sorting scrap metal when she was merely 10. She also babysat, packed nuts, and worked in a grocery store. But she never went to school.

Few of the simple pleasures of childhood were available. Musical theater provided rare moments of joy in a life of hard labor that included assisting her mother, who was an unofficial midwife and herbalist. The family went through two serious car accidents and her brother Shawn suffered multiple head injuries at his father's construction site. Shawn's behavior grew cruel, especially after his brain damage. He would put Westover's head down the toilet, bend her wrist back until it nearly snapped, and call her a "whore" for wearing lip gloss. This sadistic pattern was repeated with another sister and later, with his wife, yet Westover struggled to convince her parents to believe her and do something, anything, about Shawn's manipulative violence.

Education was Westover's means of escape. Like her brother Tyler before her, she studied independently until she passed the ACT and earned acceptance to Brigham Young University. Here she was forced to wake up to her extreme ignorance. She raised a hand in history class to ask what "the Holocaust" meant, and learned who Martin Luther King, Jr. was. A study abroad year at King's College, Cambridge, opened her mind even more and paved the way for her return to England for Master's and PhD degrees in history. One professor told her she'd written one of the best essays he'd read in 30 years, and referred to her as his "Pygmalion" – a fresh mind that he could mold for success.

From an Idaho junkyard to the venerable halls of Cambridge—it was disorienting for Westover to think of how far she had come and truly believe she deserved to be there. Trips home plunged her back into family turmoil. Her parents disapproved of her pursuing education instead of marriage and motherhood, and her father was severely burned in a fuel tank explosion. He didn't believe in modern medicine, so never went to a hospital; his wife treated him at home with her herbal salves, a booming business that made them wealthy.

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. And though the temptation must have been strong, she doesn't portray her father as a villain; he's more like an Old Testament patriarch, fierce and unmovable. She is careful not to make hers a simple narrative about rejecting Mormonism – in fact, she opens with a disclaimer to that effect – because her parents' extremism was far beyond what is the norm for Mormons.

The writing takes this astonishing life story to the next level, making it a classic to sit alongside memoirs by Alexandra Fuller, Mary Karr and Jeannette Walls. Westover narrates with calm authority, channeling the style of the scriptures and history books that were formative in her upbringing and education. One of my favorite passages reflects on the fundamental differences between her father's viewpoint and her own: "My father and I looked at the temple. He saw God; I saw granite. We looked at each other. He saw a woman damned; I saw an unhinged old man, literally disfigured by his beliefs."

This is one of the most powerful and well-written memoirs I've ever read. In its first half a young girl spends lonely years in the wide-open sanctuary of the American West: "Her classroom was a heap of junk. Her textbooks, slates of scrap," Westover writes. In the second half the whole world and its history open up to her, but at a high price: "having sacrificed my family to my education." The author remains estranged from her parents, and the siblings have formed two factions: four work for her parents' herbal empire in Idaho; three left to pursue education, all obtaining doctoral degrees. Which route would you choose?

Such a brave, honest, intelligent account of a childhood that was anything but conventional. Despite physical and mental abuse, being made to work in conditions that no-one, least of all a young child, should and a lack of any formal education, Tara not only survived but educated herself and ultimately became a PhD. But she mourned the loss of her family along the way and even though her eyes were opened to the fallacies that she had been fed all her life, she still missed them and loved them despite everything. One of her brothers was clearly mentally ill, as was her father, and she suffered incredible abuse from him that her parents refused to acknowledge. Was sexual abuse also involved and Tara cannot yet voice this? It was his treatment of her and her sister that finally caused the split with her family and a breakdown in Tara. But she began to heal and flourish, finding support within the extended family unit. Brutal, chilling but ultimately a tale of the human spirit overcoming terrible obstacles to shine, it grows in strength as she does and in the end we are dazzled.

Undoubtedly a fascinating story.
I felt at times it missed the details beyond family - things like the first day at formal education, the process of integrating. A lot of the education part was very high level overviews - I would have loved to find out more of her day to day transition.

A intriguing autobiography spanning Tara’s hectic childhood in rural Idaho.

As a companion piece to Rebecca Stott's Days of Rain this is an incredible read of one woman's triumph over adversity, which however came at huge personal cost as a child and adult. It is a tale of religious extremism versus education and the triumph of the will. My heart was in my mouth throughout.

Tara Westover's book Educated is a memoir of her childhood growing up in rural Idaho - home-schooled, bottling food for the End Days, listening to her father's fundamentalist Mormon prepper rants - and what happens when she challenges the assumptions their family is built on. Superbly written and thought provoking; I just finished this last night and I'm utterly blown away by it.

What a ride! One of the most intense books I’ve ever read. Told from the perspective of Tara, born into a Mormon family in rural Idaho to an overbearing zealous survivalist father and a kowtowing mother, with four brothers and a sister. Coerced from a very early age to work in her father’s scrapyard with virtually no schooling, the sheer physicality and danger to life and limb for her and her brothers is breathtaking. You will loathe the father, want to shake up the mother and take out Tara from this vicious, toxic environment. But the constant dogmatic brainwashing works: One has to be righteous and when devastating things happen, they do because it is God’s will. When I told my husband about the book, he thought it was just a novel, but I knew from its sheer intensity that it could only have been written by someone who had been through this ordeal. Tara eventually escapes the life at the scrapyard heading for academia, but she pays a hefty price and is plagued by detachment, guilt and self-doubt. Her parents side with Tara’s viciously brutal brother Shawn and cast her out of the family. Just this week, an interview with Tara Westover appeared in the Times Magazine - that’s where I’m heading now. An unputdownable tour-de-force!

I am obsessed with books about unusual religions and this book about surviving abuse and at the hands of Tara's Mormon parents was horrifying and fascinating.

Tara Westover's story is totally different from any other. Her childhood and upbringing by her parents is harsh and far removed from what we expect normal childhood to be. I feel that she has been very brave in telling her story. Her decision to go to university was courageous. This book is worth reading. It will stay with me for a long time.

This book, or rather the story of the life Tara endured, is horrifying. At one point I contemplated not continuing any further as it was making me feel quite distressed. However I ended up finishing the book because it is so raw and brutally honest, that I felt as if I would be doing Tara a disservice to not continue. Despite the unpleasant content, it is well written and has earned the five stars.

I was fascinated by Tara's story and her struggle to overcome the unusual and difficult upbringing she had. Her determination to read and learn was inspirational and she is clearly a gifted person. I hope that she has been able to come to terms with her family background and found happiness in her life now.

I have the highest regard for education, and for people who fight through adversity to get an education, but I feel this book is more about Tara's need to escape her family situation than a desire for learning.
I don't understand how a university, BYU, can admit someone with no knowledge of the world around them and no skills to help them learn on to an undergraduate degree course.
Tara has no idea how to write an essay, how to glean information from a textbook, when or who to contact for help. Nothing.
Regardless of Tara's initial comments the central tenets of this book all whirl around religion; around Mormonism. Would a non Mormon with similar 'education' get a place at BYU? I very much doubt it.
If Mormonism is not central why is Tara questioning herself when the Bishop tells her to enrol in counselling "so that one day she might enjoy an eternal marriage to a righteous man".
It is obvious that when Tara finally embraces education that she is brilliant. I recognised the names of a few of her professors. They are highly regarded. No one short of brilliant would have won a place at Cambridge or have been accepted to study there for a PhD.
Even so her book is, in my opinion, a mess...a jumble...introverted. Tara has not found the strength to tell her readers what really happened. We are expected to muddle through, hopefully reaching the correct conclusions.
I believe she was abused by Shawn. Whether it was physical, mental or sexual I don't know. Why else would he call her a whore?

This is a powerful true story of a woman who struggles to break free of her abusive family by educating herself. The family live on the fringes of society in Idaho, making a living through scrap metal dealing and eventually homeopathic medicine. They are Mormons and no much how Tara states that her book is not about Mormonism, there is no escaping the fact that this religion is central to the family's ideology and beliefs and how they regard modern medicine, education and women. The father and brother both have mental issues, (undiagnosed, possibly bipolar) and they use their power and religion as an excuse for bringing their family up in ignorance and subjugating them to what amounts to torture. The mother is complicit, although she makes a pretence of standing up to the father once or twice. The women are called whores if they so much as reveal an inch of skin or talk to a boy, There are shocking risks taken with dangerous machinery which results in horrific accidents. These are treated with herbs and tinctures and refusal to go to hospital or see a doctor or even take a pain killer. When Tara and her sister try to break free, the family gather round to suck them back in, citing Lucifer and subjecting them to hours of lecturing and preaching, bullying and physical abuse. It is truly sickening to read. Tara eventually breaks free after going back again and again, trying to get her head round what is the truth. She eventually gains the highest, privileged education, at Cambridge and Harvard, and becomes a doctor of philosophy.
I think this will be a best-seller.