Book review: "Educated" by Tara Westover

"Educated" is a fascinating how-to book for parents interested in raising a child to become a scholar at Harvard and earn a PhD at Cambridge University.

Here's the "Educated" formula:

• Do NOT send your children to school. Keep them home and have them work in the junkyard out back. 
• Do NOT teach them history, personal hygiene, or anything about human reproduction.
• Do NOT vaccinate your children or take them to a doctor.
• Teach them to fear the government and, well, everyone outside your family. 
• Let an older sibling physically abuse them (repeatedly sticking the younger child's head in a toilet is one suggested option)

Put all those elements in a blender, spin it around and -- voila! -- you will have Tara Westover, the author of "Educated." Despite being raised by a bipolar survivalist father who put all his faith in God

and a mother who never questioned her husband, despite never going to school before college, despite a brother who took pleasure in inflicting pain on her, Westover went on to become a successful historian at Harvard and Cambridge. 

Based on "Educated," she's also a pretty good writer.

You can't help but be pulled into Westover's story because her upbringing was so bizarre. She was raised in southern Idaho by parents who were continually preparing for a coming apocalypse. Her Book of Mormon-thumping father was an impatient metal "scrapper" whose recklessness contributed to a spore of accidents -- falls, car crashes, burns -- that injured almost everyone in the family.

She was so naive that as a teenager she wondered if she might be pregnant even though she had never even kissed a boy. She had never heard the word "Holocaust" before college. She never learned even rudimentary standards of cleanliness, much to the dismay of her college roommates, who were frustrated that Westover's habits contributed to a foul odor in their living quarters.

"The apartment looked fine to me. So what if there were rotting peaches in the fridge and dirty dishes in the sink? So what if the smell slapped you in the face when you came through the door? To my mind the stench was bearable, the house was clean, and I extended this philosophy to my person. I never used soap except when I showered, usually once or twice a week, and sometimes I didn't use it event then."


"Educated" has many similarities to "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls. Both books tell of  a weird childhood that was almost comical. Both books turn darker and more serious as they progress. Both books are testaments to the resilience of humans to blossom and succeed despite an upbringing that seemed fated to hold them back.

Westover tells her stories with vibrant detail and is honest enough to admit that in some cases her memories differ from others who were present at the same events she is describing.


One of the difficulties in reading this book is grasping why Westover continues to engage with her family -- going home for holidays, allowing her parents to come and stay in her tiny Harvard dorm room -- even after it's clear they are abusive. Westover, with the blessing of time and age, writes with such maturity that it's hard to fathom why she doesn't just cut them off.

Halfway through the book I was mentally screaming at the pages, "Get out! Just get out and never come back!"

But it's easy for an outsider to say this. It's not my family. And much of the challenge in telling her story is for Westover to show us how deeply her father's beliefs and her family culture is engrained in her. For her first 17 years, that was the only lifestyle she knew.

In the latter parts of the book, as her family division grows, she describes how some family members accused her of having a fault grasp of reality. Around the same time, she describes a series of emotional and mental breakdowns. Given that the entire book is told by Westover, I started to wonder: Is she a reliable storyteller?  A want to believe so, but unless some of her relatives come forward to publicly confirm her story, it's hard to say for sure.