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Educated: The international bestselling memoir Paperback – 1 Nov. 2018

by Tara Westover (Author)

4.6 207,681 ratings

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THE MULTI-MILLION COPY BESTSELLER

A BETWEEN THE COVERS PICK

Selected as a book of the year by AMAZON, THE TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES, GUARDIAN, NEW YORK TIMES, ECONOMIST, NEW STATESMAN, VOGUE, IRISH TIMES, IRISH EXAMINER and RED MAGAZINE

'One of the best books I have ever read . . . unbelievably moving' Elizabeth Day
'An extraordinary story, beautifully told' Louise O'Neill
'A memoir to stand alongside the classics . . . compelling and joyous' Sunday Times

Tara Westover grew up preparing for the end of the world. She was never put in school, never taken to the doctor. She did not even have a birth certificate until she was nine years old.

At sixteen, to escape her father's radicalism and a violent older brother, Tara left home. What followed was a struggle for self-invention, a journey that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes, and the will to change it.

'It will make your heart soar' Guardian
'Jaw-dropping and inspiring, everyone should read this book' Stylist
'Absolutely superb . . . so gripping I could hardly breathe' Sophie Hannah

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Print length

400 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Windmill Books
Publication date

1 Nov. 2018
Dimensions

19.8 x 12.9 x 2.4 cm
ISBN-10

0099511029
ISBN-13

978-0099511021
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The skill I was learning was a crucial one, the patience to read things I could not yet understand.
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I had begun to understand that we had lent our voices to a discourse whose sole purpose was to dehumanize and brutalize others—because nurturing that discourse was easier, because retaining power always feels like the way forward.
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Review

A memoir to stand alongside classics by the likes of Jeanette Winterson and Lorna Sage . . . a compelling and ultimately joyous account of self-determination ― Sunday Times[A] fascinating, jaw-dropping memoir -- Nina Stibbe ― Observer

[A] superb memoir… Westover’s journey from a remote corner of the American west to one of the world’s grandest seats of learning is extraordinary . . . Her story, of fighting to be herself, is as old as the hills she came from, but Westover gives us such a fresh, absorbing take that it deserves to bring her own private Idaho into the bestseller lists, book groups and, eventually, cinemas. ― The TimesHeartbreaking in its honesty...[an] intelligent and powerful memoir ― Literary Review

An amazing story, and truly inspiring. The kind of book everyone will enjoy. IT’S EVEN BETTER THAN YOU’VE HEARD.

-- Bill GatesBrilliantly recounts her journey towards knowledge and enlightenment -- Blake Morrison ― Guardian

Her story is remarkable, as each extreme anecdote described in tidy prose attests. That someone who grew up in her circumstances could achieve as much as she has is astonishing . . . The central tension she wrestles with throughout her book is how to be true to herself without alienating her family. Her upbringing was extraordinary, but that struggle is not. ― The EconomistThis memoir [is] one of the wisest accounts of family love and betrayal that I’ve read ― Mail on Sunday[An] astonishing autobiography -- Antony Beevor

An astonishing and uplifting story about the transformative power of education ― Mail on Sunday, 2018 Cultural HighlightsEducated is quite simply one of the best books I have ever read. What a writer, what a thinker and what a gift for the rest of us to be able to read her story. Unbelievably moving and profoundly thought-provoking. -- Elizabeth Day

Educated is an unflinching account of love and brutality, of the strength of blood ties and the power of imagination, and of a young woman whose intellect, self-knowledge and courage illuminate every page. There are passages so painfully vivid that they sear themselves into the memory, yet Westover is never prurient or punitive: even when writing from the depths, she does so with compassion and grace. Both the book and its writer are remarkable in every respect -- Sarah Perry, bestselling author of THE ESSEX SERPENTWestover has a story to tell that shouldn't be ignored ― The Guardian

This fiercely intelligent memoir is a fascinating and compassionate view of another world and the author’s struggle to both escape from and understand it as she heads out into the world ― The Pool, Ones to Watch in 2018A shocking and powerfully moving memoir ― Daily Express

What comes through is Tara’s grit, determination and instinctive sense that somewhere within education lies her redemption ... There is pain and adversity in this heart-wrenching memoir but ultimately what Tara leaves us with is hope ― Sunday ExpressMarvellous. There is no feeling like discovering a young writer who is springing up fully armed with so much talent -- Stephen Fry

Tara Westover's beautifully written memoir shines a light on a part of our country that we too often overlook. Her powerful tale―of trying to find a place for herself in the world, without losing her connection to her family or her beloved home―deserves to be widely read. My Mamaw would have been rooting for Tara. -- J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly ElegyAbsolutely superb . . . the last 100 pages were so gripping I could hardly breathe -- Sophie Hannah

Educated, in showing us the unstoppable power of a young woman determined to make her own decisions and find her own way, is an inspiring and important tale for our times. I am still cheering her on -- Rebecca Stott, award winning author of THE DAYS OF RAIN

Review

A memoir to stand alongside classics by the likes of Jeanette Winterson and Lorna Sage . . . a compelling and ultimately joyous account of self-determination ― Sunday Times

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Windmill Books; 1st edition (1 Nov. 2018)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0099511029
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0099511021
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 19.8 x 12.9 x 2.4 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 1,580 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 1 in Mormons
- 4 in Child Abuse Biographies

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4.6 207,681 ratings

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Tara Westover

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Tara Westover is an American author living in the UK. Born in Idaho to a father opposed to public education, she never attended school. She spent her days working in her father's junkyard or stewing herbs for her mother, a self-taught herbalist and midwife. She was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom, and after that first taste, she pursued learning for a decade. She graduated magna cum laude from Brigham Young University in 2008 and was subsequently awarded a Gates Cambridge Scholarship. She earned an MPhil from Trinity College, Cambridge in 2009, and in 2010 was a visiting fellow at Harvard University. She returned to Cambridge, where she was awarded a PhD in history in 2014.

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Anecdotal

Education rescues victim from a toxic family

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 December 2023

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I was left with a whirlwind of emotions when I closed the last page. Sadness at the violence and cruel mind washing meted out to the Westover children and admiration for a woman who had not attended school until the age of 17 and went on to achieve a PhD and deep inner knowledge in the process.
Quite a few of the reviews I have read doubt Tara’s story – I do not. Nigella Lawson did not believe it all but changed her mind when listening to the audiobook version.
It is true that the brain’s plasticity means individuals may have different memories of events. Certainly, Tara accepts and alludes to that. Her journals, which bore pictures of Jesus until she was about 17, after which they were simply black, are written records of how she felt at particular times in her life. Along with assorted emails they are what we might call the ‘evidence’ that she will have shared with her editors. All books are supposed to be given the once over by a lawyer to avoid untruths in any case.
I think that religion – any sort – in the wrong hands, easily morphs into a powerful method of control, and often that control is used to subdue other people in their orbit, including a spouse and children.
Tara’s mother, Laree, has gone on to publish her own version of events in “Educating” and her essential oils company, “Butterfly Express”, has made them a great deal of money despite the hate emails they received when Tara’s book was first published. Val’s conviction that the Days of Abomination would arrive with the year 2000 was shown to be a lie and seemed to exacerbate his lack of safety in the scrapyard. He was always pushing things, playing with fire – literally. But the wounds carried by some of his children are more than flesh deep.
Tara’s parents will never admit their faults. Tara will never again return to their strange beliefs and lifestyle. Yet, she was able to perform on stage and sing beautifully despite conditions at home – in many ways these were the first examples of her escaping the family, living for a short time in another world where there could be happy endings, a world where bad people got their comeuppance.
The book is well written but the main text never achieves the wonderful level of the lyrical prose in the Prologue:
…”the wheat field is a corps de ballet, each stem following the rest in bursts of movement, a million ballerinas bending, one after the other, as great gales dent their golden heads. The shape of that dent lasts only a moment, and is as close as anyone gets to seeing wind”.

One person found this helpful

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Bernard Hall

Breathtaking!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 February 2024

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The ultimate page-turner. An amalgam of ideas, emotions, actions in a frighteningly dysfunctional family. Brilliant throughout, a memoir with much misery but in no way a misery memoir. A must read for everyone involved in education and child and family psychiatry. Astonishing writing.

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Ralph Blumenau

A young woman's a deeply damaging dependence on members of her family.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 November 2021

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Tara Westover wrote this autobiographical account in 2015, when she was 29. She had broken with some members of her family. The story she tells is truly appalling, its horrors, until near the end, overshadowing her achievements in life.

She was born in 1986 in Idaho, the daughter of Gene, a strict and hard-working farmer, builder and scrap dealer. He was an extreme and controlling Mormon fundamentalist. He was awaiting the Days of Abomination, when the sinners would be separated from the saved at the End of Days. He was suspicious of a godless government, and Tara, at the age of seven, had no birth certificate), no medical records, and had not been to school (except to a Mormon Sunday school), and, like her six older siblings – five brothers and one sister - had been indoctrinated by their father’s crazy beliefs.

Several of Gene’s children, including Tara, worked with him in the scrapyard. He was totally irresponsible in the use he made of the potentially lethal machinery there and what he told his children to do, with the result that Tara, and later he brother Luke, had very bad accidents. In the end, Gene himself had a horrific accident, resulting in a fiery explosion which scorched much of his body, permanently disfigured his face and hands and affected his lungs. He attributed the accident and his survival for a still active life to the Lord’s will.

Gene fulminated against young women who, he thought, dressed immodestly and flaunted their bodies. When, at the age of 15, Tara’s body began to change, she became inhibited about her own body, though she dressed modestly.

Tara’s mother, Faye was an unlicensed midwife, a herbalist and eventually a faith healer. She had a huge clientele and had many assistants to help prepare her ointments and tinctures. Though not as extreme in her Mormonism as Gene, she loyally backed him, gave Tara no support, and agreed with Gene’s excoriation of any medicines other than herbal ones, and did not allow Tara to take any medicine other than her mother’s herbal concoctions.

Shawn, one of Tara’s brothers, was a manipulative and violent psychopath. Tara suffered many times from his excruciating violence towards her, though he always apologized afterwards. Her mother knew about this, but did nothing to protect her. When Tara told Gene about it, he refused to believe it.
One would have thought that Tara would hate her father and Shawn, but she accepted all that was done to her, and even felt love for Gene and for Shawn.

But her brother Tyler told her that, for her own good, she should leave home and enrol in Brigham Young University (BYU, a Mormon university), as he had. Tara began to study for the admissions test She passed, and was now away from home at least in term time.

In a psychology course she learnt about bi-polar disorder and was sure that Gene suffered from it, and that that was what had had such a devastating effect on his family. She now made a conscious decision to free herself from her father’s influence and to become “normal”.

One of her professors at BYU thought highly of her and thought she ought to be stretched further by going on a programme to Cambridge University in England. It is not exactly clear how it was that she applied and was accepted. But, although her professors there thought she was first class, she never felt comfortable there and was glad to return to BYU for her graduation there when the programme ended.

It’s all confusing after that. In view of how uncomfortable she had been at Cambridge, what made her sit for a scholarship for Cambridge and return there in 2008, aged 22, to Trinity College? In the press and TV interviews that followed her winning the scholarship, she had never mentioned that she had been home-schooled; and her father bitterly resented that. Her parents refused to attend her graduation, and her father disapproved of her returning to Cambridge.

There again she soon blossomed academically, and her supervisor thought highly of her. She worked on a Ph.D about Mormon theology.

She was awarded a visiting fellowship at Harvard. Her parents came to see her at Harvard. Gene, more crazy than ever, was on a mission to reconvert her, and Faye was a certain as he was that Tara was possessed by Lucifer. Tara was tempted to renounce her recent life, but she resisted, though, after they had left, she had a complete breakdown, with nightmares at night and unable to work in daytime. She even flew back to Idaho, but she had scarcely got home before she left again to return to Harvard, and, when the visiting fellowship was over, back to Cambridge. For a long time she could not work on her Ph.D. She had written to her parents a letter full of abuse, saying she would cut contact with them. She went into counselling, and after a long time was able to work again and eventually got her Ph.D. in 2013.

For a long time she rehearsed in her mind her grievances against Gene, but the counselling must have helped her at long last to shed her guilt. “It was the only way I could love him.”

Her maternal grandmother had died, and Tara returned to Idaho for her funeral. Her parents were not present: Gene had fallen out with Faye’s sister, and Faye would not attend without him. But all Tara’s uncles and aunts and all her siblings were there. Her sister was hostile to her; Shawn ignored her; but all the others accepted her, despite what Gene had said to them about her. She would be close to three of her brothers. She had a family again.

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Amazon Customer

Children that survive in spite of their parents.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 February 2024

Verified Purchase

This storey leads you through one shocking event after another. How any of the family survived is a miracle! In their isolated circumstances, at least 3 of the siblings manage to benefit from higher education. A gripping tale of a very unusual family, leaving you wanting to know more. Much appreciated by our Book Club.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 February 2024

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Excellent book could not put it down
Really proud of the author and how her life turned out in the end

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Chirpy

What will you risk so that you can be educated?

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 February 2024

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An honest and painful look back, making sense of close family, wider family, the neighbourhood and then much wider afield.

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Amazon Customer

Great memoir! It brought up many emotions, and I read this book in 2 days.

Reviewed in Canada on 4 March 2024

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This book came recommended to me, as interesting, and inspiring.
It conjures up so many emotions, it’s like a whirlwind at times. I enjoyed it, thoroughly!

Renata

Sensível e forte

Reviewed in Brazil on 20 February 2024

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A primeira frase já alerta para um livro extremamente bem escrito. Com o passar dos capítulos, o livro se expande. Além da escrita maravilhosa da autora, aprendemos sobre a sua vida: que história forre e comovente. Ao final, a admiração pela autora e sua coragem em escrever este livro dominaram, não queria parar de ler. Foi uma ótima dica que peguei por acaso na newsletter do Bill Gates.

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Carlos R. Ortiz Castro

Súper !!

Reviewed in Mexico on 29 October 2023

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Todo en orden

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Melanie Z.

Absolutes MUST-READ

Reviewed in Germany on 13 March 2024

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Dieses Buch wirkt noch immer bei mir nach. Die Geschichte ist schier unglaublich. Tara, die in einer extremen Mormonenfamilie, die jegliche Berührung mit der Regierung strikt ablehnt, auf einem abgelegenen Berg in Idaho aufwächst, durfte nie eine Schule besuchen. Ebenso wenig weiß sie, wann sie geboren wurde. Die sieben Kinder der Familie sind durch den psychotischen Vater vielerlei Gefahren und des innerfamiliären Missbrauchs ausgesetzt. Trotzdem findet Tara ihren Weg in das Bildungssystem und erhält schließlich ein Stipendium im englischen Cambridge, wo sie auch ihren Doktorgrad in Geschichte erwirbt. Nichtsdestotrotz fällt es ihr schwer, sich von der Familie zu lösen und hat mir vielerlei Trauma zu kämpfen.
Ein unglaubliche Geschichte, die an Herz und Nieren geht! Unbedingt lesen! Sollte auf keiner reading list fehlen!

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Cliente

⭐️ My absolute favourite book.

Reviewed in Spain on 1 January 2024

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⭐️ Tara, a young American, never went to school, she lived with her Mormon family in middle of the mountains, in Idaho. She suffered physical and psychological abuses from her fanatic parents and a violent brother. When she is 16 she decided to educate herself, against her religious parents and their views of the life. She went to college and then discovered the "real life", it made her understand, misunderstand and wonder about many things of her own childhood, education and life. She studied and also learnt how to be "normal", even if both drove her away from her family. She made a choice, and her choice is education.

⭐️ My absolute favourite book. It's always the first book I read at the beginning of the year.

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