Educated is a fascinating memoir about a young girl brought up in a Fundamentalist Mormon family who live in a remote mountain valley in Idaho.   In a home where the father makes all the decisions, mental health, fanaticism, paranoia, and deep mistrust all play a role in shaping Tara’s life, her education, her relationships, and her understanding of the world.

Tara Westover is frank about the dysfunctionality of the family and its members.    Denial is a big part of everyday life and the “big lies” are repeated daily to reinforce the fear and compliance with the code of conduct for the family.

Tara never attends regular school, nor does she have any exposure to what she can learn from the wider world, but in bits and pieces, she discovers fragments of knowledge, enough to get a start at learning .   She perseveres and gets accepted into Brigham Young University and eventually completes a PHD from Cambridge.

There is no reconciliation, nor really much peace in the process of educating herself, then in living away from the family.    Themes of loyalty, guilt, forgiveness, and redemption wind in spirals through the phases of growing up and moving on.   The reader looks for forgiveness and healing in the family, but denial, resentment, and a truce are the final terms.

The storytelling is painfully honest, uncomfortable, but compelling and ultimately rewarding.

My rating – 4.9 out of 5.0 stars4.9

An excerpt: