Book Review: Educated | Tara Westover

This was Book #4 that I've read this year. Since this book was published in 2018, I won't be counting it towards my 20 for 2020 challenge. Below is a spoiler-free discussion.

I didn’t really like this book as much as I wanted to. Part of it was definitely because of all of the hype. I’m usually really affected when I hear a lot of hype around something. When I hear a lot about something and everyone loves it I can’t help but focus on all of the faults. I also just want to put a little disclaimer here that I recognize that this a memoir that is retelling a true story. It’s always really difficult to criticize and discuss something that’s based in reality because I don’t want it to seem like I don’t empathize with the writer or that I’m criticizing their lives and their decisions. So I just want to emphasize that my criticism and comments on the book are just on how the story was told, and I’m not criticizing Tara herself or the actions that she took.

One thing that I really had a problem with was that the book got very repetitive for me. It felt very slow and drawn out, and it also felt very repetitive because similar things would happen with slight variations every time. It was very confusing and repetitive each time where there were slightly different roommates and slightly different jobs were mentioned and usually had very little bearing on the story overall. It was also extremely frustrating for me to watch Tara keep going back to her family after what they’d done to her. It’s completely understandable that she kept going back after all of the brainwashing and gaslighting, I just didn’t think we had to hear about every time that happened when it could have been summarized down significantly.

Another factor that prevented me from liking the book as much as I wanted to was because I didn’t feel much of a connection to Tara and her story. We don’t really get to know much about Tara herself, her likes and dislikes, her dreams (at least in the beginning). Of course, her stories are so heartbreaking and terrible, but I thought that her recounting of these stories felt emotionally distant. This became very frustrating for me because it should have been so easy for me to connect to her and her struggles because she has been through such hardships, but because Tara was very avoidant with her feelings it prevented me from forming a bond with her. She tells us about how she would repress and deny her emotions (or refuse to acknowledge that the event even happened), but we rarely got a glimpse of what feelings exactly she was repressing. We would be stopped before we could get that far. Even by the end, unfortunately, it doesn’t feel like enough progress has been made to make it feel like a complete journey. It’s completely understandable given what Tara has been through that she has difficulty coming to terms with her emotions, but it’s disappointing that throughout the retelling and even in the end, it still doesn’t exactly feel fully transparent and honest. And that is her prerogative. If she doesn’t want to be completely open and share the complete depths of her heart and her struggle, that is completely up to her; however for me this honesty and vulnerability is what makes up a great memoir, and this lack of emotional honesty and description did prevent me from establishing a full connection to her and her story, and it made me feel that the story was far from complete. Again, I completely respect Tara for sharing her story- it just didn’t go as far as I needed to see and just wasn’t for me.

One small note I have is also that I feel that the synopsis gives a slightly misleading description than what the book actually is (specifically regarding the survivalist aspect). I am obviously in the minority here with my opinions. I tried to capture my feelings as best as I could, but there could also be other factors at play that affected why I didn’t like it as much as others. I don’t typically read non-fiction books and read this book as part of a book club I participate in. So it could be that this just wouldn’t be my first pick to read. It could also be that I thought it was something else based on the synopsis.

I just want to end this by saying that I respect Tara for telling her story, I just didn’t particularly connect with it. It was just not for me, and that’s okay. I'd probably give this a 2.5/5 rating. Have any of you read this book? I'd love to hear your thoughts down below, especially since I seem to be in the minority with my feelings towards this book.