Perhaps I should wait to write this, because I just finished reading it fifteen minutes ago and my head is still spinning. I scanned the reviews and found tons of 5-stars, and then several one-stars. I loved it, so I thought WTF? And then realized a few of those 1-stars were admittedly written by family members and a few by people who know the family, living near them in rural Idaho. (Funny how the negative reviews seem to be from people who are apparently dependent on the thriving business Tara’s parents have built in rural Idaho. It grew from her mother, who had worked as a midwife and unlicensed medical practitioner and evolved into a thriving enterprise employing LOTS of people (including relatives, friends and neighbors) manufacturing and distributing herbal tinctures, salves, etc. But I’m getting ahead of myself here…
When I heard the bare bones outline of Tara’s story, I thought “Aha! The Glass Castle goes to BYU!” And with The Glass Castle being one of my 5 favorite books of ALL TIME, I was excited to get a copy of Educated, thanks to Random House and NetGalley.
Tara Westover grew up the youngest child of fundamentalist Mormon parents. I’ve had curiosity about various religions, and remember being particularly entranced and appalled when I learned quite a bit about Mormonism from Secret Ceremonies back in the 1990s. For Tara, this devout adherence to whatever her father believed meant she was “unschooled,” never even setting foot in a classroom until she was accepted to BYU after self-study sufficient to pass the ACT. From there, she went on to grad school at Cambridge, became a visiting fellow at Harvard, then completed her PhD at Cambridge in four years.
When I read “The Glass Castle” the first time, I kept putting the book down (occasionally throwing it across the room) because I was so upset by the story. Parts of it reminded me too much of my own adolescence and I felt such anger at the parents and others who SHOULD HAVE DONE SOMETHING but didn’t. It was different this time, partly because religion wasn’t part of what I dealt with growing up, but in some ways it was even worse this time. Tara’s parents don’t even have the saving grace of artistic creativity and appreciation of free thought that was present for Jeannette Walls’s parents. For me, it is much easier to be able to sum up at least a tiny bit of appreciation for Jeannette’s parents who were quirky artistic addicts than for Tara’s parents who are batshit crazy zealots.
As if the parents’ religious extremism weren’t enough, they turned a blind eye to the abuse heaped on Tara, and despite her mother’s occasional admissions that her husband was bipolar, she still was a submissive wife first, and chose obedience to her husband and his craziness over a relationship with the daughter she claimed to love.
Tara recognizes that “Dad had always been a hard man—a man who knew the truth on every subject and wasn’t interested in what anybody else had to say.” I just found him disgusting and cruel.
Some reviewers describe themselves as “Doubting Thomases” and question whether the events could possibly have happened as written. Really? They haven’t had enough contact with people whose lives revolve around their “faith.” The horrific abuse is heartbreaking, but Tara’s resilience is heartwarming, and because I knew that she had survived to write her story I was able to keep reading, because I knew that while the book might not have quite a happy ending, at least she had gotten away.
I yelled at Rex Walls when I learned that all the while the family in The Glass Castle was suffering, the parents owned property that could have changed the children’s lives. I yelled at several people in Educated, including the parents, the siblings, and even Tara – I kept thinking “NO! You have made the break! Don’t go back!” To avoid spoilers, I won’t say more, will just say this memoir will be appreciated by anyone who loves stories about strong women, crazy religious fanatics, faith healers, etc. Five gigantic stars.