Book review: Educated by Tara Westover

I had picked a different book review to appear on the blog this week. The draft had been ready for months and all I had to do was hit the publish button. But having finished the highly-acclaimed memoir Educated by Tara Westover last night, my mind was swirling with so many impressions that I felt compelled to channel all my efforts into it. After an hour of trying to coherently piece together my collective thoughts and opinions from reading the book, I realised that with a few additions and adjustments, I had a complete book review. Not one who can rest easy knowing that something lies unfinished, I went ahead and did just that 😁

Educated by American author Tara Westover was one of the most talked about non-fiction books in 2018 even endorsed by former US President Barack Obama. I am four years late in joining the legion of bibliophiles raving about the novel but then again, better late than never.

As of the September 2020, the book has spent 132 consecutive weeks on the The New York Times Hardcover Non-Fiction Best Seller list. It won a 2019 Alex Award, the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Memoir & Autobiography and was a finalist for a number of national awards, including the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and two National Book Critics Circle awards.

Educated is a courageous, inspirational and extraordinary memoir about self-discovery.

***Synopsis***
Tara Westover grows up in a fundamentalist, survivalist Mormon family in the mountainous region of rural Idaho. The family lead an isolated and nonconformist lifestyle in a shabby house at the foothills of Buck's Peak. Tara's radical father distrusts the US government, despises the medical establishment, discourages his seven children from going to public school and makes them stockpile supplies for “doomsday” when he isn’t getting them to salvage scrap in his junkyard, often performing perilous tasks with flagrant disregard for safety. Tara’s mother puts her instincts to good use as a herbalist preparing natural healing remedies. She eventually starts working as a self-taught healer and unlicensed midwife, thus supporting the family. 

As a child, Tara doesn’t meet other children her age. Helping her mother stewing herbs or preparing tinctures in the kitchen and toiling away with her father and brothers in the junkyard is how she spends her days. Her worldview is shaped by her father’s bizarre one-dimensional outlook. Weighed down by patriarchy, her future as a woman is confined to marriage, motherhood and a life of quiet subservience. But when two of her brothers step out into the outside world in pursuit of education, it ignites a tiny spark in Tara. An inherent aptitude for learning, a love of books and natural flair for music takes her out of her little bubble and opens her eyes to the possibility  of a different life. But a fear of her parents disapproval, inadequate homeschooling and niggling self-doubt holds her back. After a spate of horrific injuries stemming from her father’s poor judgement that affect several members of the family and having to witness them painfully recover at home despite needing hospital care, Tara starts to seriously contemplate change. The last straw is having to endure multiple counts of emotional and physical abuse at the hands of a volatile brother which prompts her to extricate herself from the shadow of the mountain and live life on her own terms. 

From there begins her incredible journey in self-invention from Brigham Young University to Cambridge and then Harvard, eventually culminating in a PhD. For someone who hadn’t heard of the World Trade Centre, Napoleon, the Holocaust or the Civil Rights movement until she entered University, Tara has to contend with a steep learning curve. Not to mention, learning about basic hygiene, choosing to dress like a normal young woman and overcoming the misconception that vaccinations and medicine are poison among many others. As she trudges forward, Tara makes new friends, travels to exciting destinations, amasses newfound knowledge and skills while unlearning many harmful ingrained beliefs. 

Once she takes over the reins of her own life, Tara confronts her parents with the past abuse. But she is walking a tightrope between family love and betrayal. She comes to realise that standing her ground comes at a heavy price. 

“Everything I had worked for, all my years of study, had been to purchase for myself this one privilege: to see and experience more truths than those given to me by my father, and to use those truths to construct my own mind. I had come to believe that the ability to evaluate many ideas, many histories, many points of view, was at the heart of what it means to self-create. If I yielded now, I would lose more than an argument. I would lose custody of my own mind. This was the price I was being asked to pay, I understood that now. What my father wanted to cast from me wasn’t a demon: it was me.”

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― Tara Westover, Educated

My thoughts….
The memoir is narrated in three parts. The first part describes Tara's life beginning in Buck's Peak until her acceptance into Brigham Young University. Part two covers Tara’s studies at BYU and King's College, Cambridge. In Part three, Tara writes about her life in Cambridge and completing her PhD.

It is often said that fact is stranger than fiction. Educated proves that to be true. As someone who is just four years older than the author, I found it astonishing that despite hailing from one of the most developed countries in the world, Tara got her birth certificate only when she was nine years old and never set foot in a classroom until the age of seventeen! This is an incredible true story and I’m so glad that the author mustered the courage to share it. 

Tara Westover has a flair for writing and she has to be lauded for her debut novel. Despite not having a strong foundation in schooling during her formative years, her vocabulary is brilliant and prose evocative and subtly nuanced. They way she describes the mountain in the opening chapter had me captivated. There is a freshness and innocence to her writing that is appealing. The pace of the novel is brisk and every aspect of the memoir comes across as important. She tells her story with intent and doesn’t bore the reader with trivial details. Most importantly, her ability to engage in self-introspection is remarkable and this quality strikes a chord with the reader. 

There were a few parts in the novel where I would have liked a bit more explanation. For example, how Tara’s mother got involved in the 'chakra' energy work considering that form of spiritual healing is a tradition of Hinduism tracing back to ancient India and is generally associated with yoga and pranic healing. Call me ignorant but that part struck me as peculiar given the Westover's religious ideological extremism. Another aspect that perplexed me was Tara choosing to hang out with her brother after the abuse, that too often alone. I’m fortunate never to have experienced any form of abuse in my life so it could be that I don’t understand the power dynamics and complexities that are involved but a little more insight would have been helpful. Something else I pondered over was Tara’s impetus to write the novel. Was the end goal to achieve healing and closure? What was going through her mind during the writing process? What did she think would happen after her memoir was out in the open? I would have liked her to elaborate a bit more on that aspect. And lastly, I wish she had alluded to her lifestyle post-PhD (regarding her current perspective on religion, education, marriage, motherhood) and which direction she is heading with her career. Like many readers, I had been championing her from start to end and it would have served to satisfy my curiosity. But these are just minor details so don’t mind my quibbling. 

It is unfortunate that Tara Westover is estranged from more than half her family because she decided to share her truth with the world. There have been accusations put forth (mainly by her parents) that her memoir isn’t entirely truthful. But I’ll tell you this - as a reader, I believe her. For one, it is difficult to reconstruct events from a childhood long gone, exactly as they unfolded. Some discrepancies are to be expected and some liberties may be taken as long as the intention isn't to be deceitful. And second, within a family, it is fairly normal that recollections of past events could vary among different family members. Furthermore, I don't see why certain events described by trusted family sources in which the author isn't physically present cannot be used in a memoir. Also lending some credibility to Tara's recollections, in my opinion, are my own experiences an Asian woman who understands the oppressive impact of patriarchal norms on the psyche of a young girl. I can very well imagine Tara facing dilemmas growing up that her brothers would never be able to comprehend so none of them would be in a position to contest her experiences and consequently, undermine them. Tara is careful while explaining memories, often admitting that the specific details in her mind are hazy or footnoting them to indicate the family members she contacted in order to clarify events. She uses paraphrases of emails to emphasize moments in the story. A lot of what she has written can be fact-checked and I believe they already have been. 

Something that is obvious and to the author’s credit is that she has a balanced approach to her storytelling. At no point  in her memoir does she criticize her Mormon faith, insinuate that her parents didn’t love their children or bemoan that her basic needs (except for schooling) weren’t met. She doesn’t dehumanise anyone, not even those who willfully wronged her. She even graciously acknowledges some of the benefits she gained from her unconventional parents and upbringing. That she is still attempting to reconcile with her mother suggests that she hasn’t given up on the family that has forsaken her. 

There is more than enough reason to believe that Tara Westover endured trauma while growing up. Her self-doubt seeps from almost every page. The effects of the abuse on her mental health is documented. Her parents may not be bad people but they did make terrible choices and it also seems highly plausible that there are some serious mental health issues at play there. Ironically, her mother deciding to publish her own memoir (a rebuttal memoir if you will) disingenuously titled ‘Educating' may help vindicate Tara because it strongly hints at her parents delusion and narcissism. That they decided to gaslight their own daughter instead of accepting her and being proud of what she managed to accomplish despite the challenges is deplorable. It is quite obvious that they have chosen pride over love and given their continued self-righteous stance, this reeks of hypocrisy. Tara is where she is today mainly because of her own hard work, grit and perseverance. Her account stuck me as not only genuine and unbiased but uncommonly kind. 

A coming-of-age memoir that is brimming with intelligence, clarity, empathy and insight. 

Highly recommended. 

My rating for this book is

Have you read Educated? What did you think of it? Leave a comment to let me know.

Cheers,
Megha