Book Review Robert Wiersema EDUCATED by Tara Westover When her first book, Educated, was published earlier this year, author Tara Westover was a 31-year-old American émigré living in the U.K., with a doctorate in intellectual history and political thought fromCambridge and a fellowship at Harvard already under her belt. It’s difficult to reconcile this Tara Westover with the then-14-year-old girl who, on September 11, 2001, “stared, bewildered” at the television in her family’s rural Idaho home “as the unimaginably tall structures swayed, then buckled.” About the twin towers of the World Trade Center, Westover writes, “I’d never heard of them until they were gone.” Educated, a stunning memoir, chronicles in painstaking and often painful detail, Westover’s life in the western United States and her journey toward a freedom and knowledge that she didn’t know she was lacking. Westover grew up as one of seven children of survivalist parents – fringe-fundamentalist offshoots of the Mormon Church. Home was a small house surrounded by a junkyard, on the slope of Buck’s Peak. Her mother worked as an herbalist and midwife and her father, between scrapping, construction and other odd jobs, preached his revelation about the upcoming Time of Abomination to anyone who would listen. One of Westover’s strongest memories is her father’s fractured recounting of the Ruby Ridge siege, during which the cabin belonging to the apocalypse-fearing survivalist Weaver family was surrounded by various government forces, with tragic results. Westover’s father began to preach against the Illuminati and the family began hoarding and preparing for an upcoming conflict. Westover didn’t have a birth certificate until she was nine years old; she didn’t have a medical history when she left home, as her parents didn’t believe in doctors, instead using herbs and prayer for healing. As an adult, Westover ascribes her father’s behaviour and beliefs to undiagnosed bipolar disorder (“The irony was that,” she writes, “the same paranoia that was a symptom of the illness would prevent its ever being diagnosed and treated.”), but it – along with the tenets of the family’s faith – created a difficult situation for a child. Things only got worse as Westover got older, with one older brother persecuting, abusing and attacking her as a “whore” as she developed physically (and secretly experimented with makeup), attempting to keep her in her place, to break her spirit and will. It almost worked. Westover’s escape comes through education. Despite the fact that she has no formal schooling, she applies to BrighamYoung University through a program for home-schooled students, cramming and studying to pass the entrance exams. But nothing is simple, and the shadow of her family continues to fall over Westover no matter how far she travels. University, initially, isn’t the escape that she had hoped and instead, serves as a series of humiliating reminders of just how much of an outsider she is, how ill-prepared for the outside world. (In an early art history class, for example, she raises her hand to ask what the Holocaust was – she had no idea.) Educated is a powerful, thought-provoking read, an exploration not only of a single life, but of a world which most of us can’t even imagine. Westover writes of the powerful hold of her family, and the force of their beliefs, but she also writes of them affectionately, lovingly and in considerable, lingering emotional anguish. It’s a vivid portrait of growing up and growing away, but also of the pervasive, powerful grip of the past. I suspect that it will be one of the best books of the year; it’s a truly unforgettable reading experience. CSANews | SUMMER 2018 | 43
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