Scan barcode
A review by elle_reads
Educated by Tara Westover
4.0
(Instagram @elle_reads)
BOOK REVIEW
[Educated] A girl fights to know the world outside her family’s separatist bunker.
//
WHAT I LIKED
Composed of short flashes of Tara Westover’s life strung together into a perilous narrative, each ‘short’ is a step of Westover’s journey into the land of knowledge freely given with the expectation that one critiques each word for their own self-invention. Our morals are built on what we know of the world. Westover’s world once came from the mouth of a paranoid man. Educated is a story of the threat of ignorance.
//
I appreciated that select memories had asterisks at the end of the section to denote other people’s memory of the event. Westover talks about the discrepancies in more detail in her afterword.
//
WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE
The writing formula is repetitive. Each short follows the pattern: context, event, reflection, and optional follow-up. The language connecting these sections is often repeated - many “in that moment” “then I realized” bits of language.
//
I read this book in a day. It is a suspenseful story of reflection, but perhaps a little difficult to connect to the greater human experience. It is a great observation of this particular experience, but I don’t see it becoming a classic. I didn't have to work hard to understand the story. It invited me to ski along the events.
//
Educated (by Tara Westover) ⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️4/5
//
BOOK REVIEW
[Educated] A girl fights to know the world outside her family’s separatist bunker.
//
WHAT I LIKED
Composed of short flashes of Tara Westover’s life strung together into a perilous narrative, each ‘short’ is a step of Westover’s journey into the land of knowledge freely given with the expectation that one critiques each word for their own self-invention. Our morals are built on what we know of the world. Westover’s world once came from the mouth of a paranoid man. Educated is a story of the threat of ignorance.
//
I appreciated that select memories had asterisks at the end of the section to denote other people’s memory of the event. Westover talks about the discrepancies in more detail in her afterword.
//
WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE
The writing formula is repetitive. Each short follows the pattern: context, event, reflection, and optional follow-up. The language connecting these sections is often repeated - many “in that moment” “then I realized” bits of language.
//
I read this book in a day. It is a suspenseful story of reflection, but perhaps a little difficult to connect to the greater human experience. It is a great observation of this particular experience, but I don’t see it becoming a classic. I didn't have to work hard to understand the story. It invited me to ski along the events.
//
Educated (by Tara Westover) ⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️4/5
//