Image: Educated by Len Lantz (CC BY-NC-ND)
Synopsis: Len's Star Rating: 10 out of 10. A collection of life stories and memories of a young woman in her experiences of the transformational power of education, friendships, and choosing self to escape the entrapments of poverty, isolation, and a dysfunctional, abusive family system.
BY LEN LANTZ, MD, author of unJoy / 8.13.2022; No. 93
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Star Rating – 10 out of 10
Rating guide: 1 = horrible, 5 = average and 10 = wow
Author
Tara Westover
About the author
Tara Westover, PhD, is an essayist and historian. Educated is her first book. She achieved her BA at Brigham Young University and her MPhil and PhD in history from Trinity College, Cambridge.
General description
Educated is a memoir – a collection of stories and memories – told from the viewpoint of the author, Tara Westover. The author of this critically acclaimed book grew up in a rural community in Idaho and was raised by highly religious parents who shunned the government, schools, and modern medicine. Deprived of a formal education and exposed to physical and emotional abuse, the author works to find meaning – for herself and the reader – through the painful details, her aching confusion, and the building of a new life made possible through the love and support of others as she steps into school for the first time at age 17. The story unfolds from her earliest childhood memories that contrast an ugly, dangerous junkyard and its setting, which is nestled in the breathtaking beauty of Idaho’s Rocky Mountains, and it leaves the reader urging and cheering on the author in her desire to love, but also escape, her family, and to gain true freedom and a future for herself, ultimately leading to the pinnacle of learning at Cambridge.
Unique and most important aspects
I had heard that Educated was a good book and it had been on my reading list for quite some time but didn’t get to it until my daughter read it and, knowing my family’s history, suggested that I read it, too. From my personal experiences and professional work, I found that the author provided a chillingly accurate account of severe, untreated bipolar disorder and the devastating effects it can have on an entire family.
The author’s parents in this text clearly loved their children but systematically made poor choices due to fear, ignorance, paranoia, and reckless risk-taking. In Educated, Tara Westover shows why it is so hard to break away from a family that you love. In her life that is stranger than fiction, Tara Westover has had to overcome enormous obstacles including poverty, lack of education, misapplication of religion, shame, doubt, abuse, and an inability to ask for and receive help.
Ultimately, it was her ability to obtain an education that opened her mind enough for her to see a different future for herself and to choose this over sacrificing and losing herself to a dysfunctional and abusive family system. It was an incredibly difficult decision that at times drove the author beyond her emotional limits. This is not just another story about the courage and drive to survive – Tara Westover’s stories of loss, love, friendship, and hope stay with the reader long after reading her book.
Best quotes
“I had a thousand dollars in my bank account. It felt strange just to think that, let alone say it. A thousand dollars. Extra. That I did not immediately need. It took weeks for me to come to terms with this fact, but as I did, I began to experience the most powerful advantage of money: the ability to think of things besides money.”
“It was in this state that I first heard the term bipolar disorder. I was sitting in Psychology 101 when the professor read the symptoms aloud from the overhead screen: depression, mania, paranoia, euphoria, delusions of grandeur and persecution. I listened with a desperate interest. This is my father, I wrote in my notes. He’s describing Dad.”
“‘You must stop yourself from thinking like that,’ Dr. Kerry said, his voice raised. ‘You are not fool’s gold, shining only under a particular light. Whomever you become, whatever you make yourself into, that is who you always were. It was always in you. Not in Cambridge. In you. You are gold.’”
“I had built a new life, and it was a happy one, but I felt a sense of loss that went beyond family. I had lost Buck’s Peak, not by leaving but by leaving silently.”
“But what has come between me and my father is more than time or distance. It is a change in the self. I am not the child my father raised, but he is the father who raised her.”
Who would enjoy this book?
Readers who are interested in a compelling story about overcoming trauma and the cost and rewards of leaving an unhealthy family are likely to enjoy Educated.
Who would not enjoy this book?
Readers who have a significant trauma history and would find it significantly triggering to read first-person accounts of trauma and abuse are unlikely to enjoy Educated.
Conclusion
Educated is a collection of life stories and memories of a young woman in her experiences of the transformational power of education, friendships, and choosing self to escape the entrapments of poverty, isolation, and a dysfunctional, abusive family system.