Educated by Tara Westover Review: Memoir, Survival, and Self-Creation

Educated: The Memoir That Proves Education Is More Than Schooling

TARA WESTOVER grew up in a survivalist family in rural Idaho. She didn't have a birth certificate until she was nine. She didn't set foot in a school until she was seventeen. By 32, she had a PhD from Cambridge. Educated is the story of how that happened — and what it cost her.

Published in 2018, Educated has over 195,000 Amazon reviews with an average of 4.7 stars. It spent 131 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. None of that explains what it actually feels like to read it.

What the Book Is Really About

On the surface, Educated is about a girl who taught herself enough to pass the ACT and get into Brigham Young University. Below the surface, it's about the violence of ideology — about what happens when the stories we're told about who we are conflict with who we're becoming.

Westover's family believed the government was corrupt, hospitals were dangerous, and the end of the world was coming. Her father was charismatic, brilliant, and dangerous. Her brother was abusive. The rest of the family alternated between protecting and enabling both of them.

What makes the book extraordinary is Westover's refusal to write a simple hero-villain story. She loves her family even as she describes the harm they caused. She is uncertain about her own memories. She acknowledges that the truth is complicated in ways that don't resolve neatly.

The Writing

Westover is a genuinely gifted writer. The book reads quickly but lands heavily. Her descriptions of the Idaho mountains have a beauty that makes the darkness more stark. Her portrayal of the moment she first realized she could choose a different life is one of the most quietly powerful scenes in recent memoir.

Is It Accurate?

Some family members dispute aspects of her account. Westover addresses this in the author's note: memory is imperfect, especially traumatic memory, and she presents her experience as she understood it. This is standard for memoir. Read it as one person's account of what shaped her, not as a court document.

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