Saturday’s Book: “Educated” by Tara Westover

The ties that bind us…
Naomi’s Photos

This was my third book of my audio-book treat.

Thanks to the combination of the excellent (as always!) reader and the author’s beautiful prose, the backdrop, characters and events were extremely vivid.

Too vivid at times. Honestly.

It’s an amazing story of how a girl who never went to school until she began college at the age of 17 graduated from Cambridge and the Harvard with a PhD.  And no, it’s not that she participated in a wonderful home schooling program…

I am, naturally, fascinated by what makes a person study on her own despite hostile conditions and to see the effect education has on a person’s life.  This story is certainly fascinating.

However, this woman had some extremely difficult experiences while growing up. Some passages in the book were very hard for me to listen to. From what I’ve seen in the media,  people are comparing the book to The Glass Palace. I would also compare the book to The Color of Water.  While there are certainly many similar elements (the desire for education is one of them!) I felt there was one major difference, though I could be mistaken.

In this book I felt it was a wonder that the author, Tara, was even physically alive to make it to college. Her extreme survivalist family literally placed her in physical danger on more than one occasion. Not to mention physical abuse.

If I had read a print version I may have skipped a few lines here and there, in the really rough spots.

I recommend it, but perhaps its best not take the audio version for this one.

2 thoughts on “Saturday’s Book: “Educated” by Tara Westover”

  1. Hmmm…have you read The Glass Palace? I haven’t read ‘Educated’, but it doesn’t really sound like it’s that similar to me. Though maybe I just interpreted the themes quite differently?

    1. Yes, I read the Glass Palace. I didn’t see the movie. If they make a movie out of Educated I will not see it, for sure…

Leave a Reply to Naomi Epstein Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *