(4.5 / 5)
I was such a mess after finishing Educated; Westover’s account of her path from rural Idaho to Cambridge doctorate is the most emotional book I had read so far this year. It is a harrowing and beautiful memoir, and many will be drawn in immediately.
Westover’s memoir directly addresses the three topics I feel most passionately about: family, faith, and education. She is tried and tested to her limits in each element and is forced to make a choice no one should ever have to make (especially in the twenty-first century). As a heartbreaking result, two of the three are sacrificed. Westover’s memoir puts a modern face on the centuries-old problem of a woman’s faith, place, and right to education. Her account is staggering. As a person of religious convictions, it saddens me to watch anyone (of any religion) lose their faith. However, it makes sense to me that her internal drive to reject her family lifestyle and embrace formal education and western medicine is that same inner force that pulled her from her faith. Westover prefaces the book saying that it is not about Mormonism and that most readers will be able to determine that her experience in the Mormon religion is not typical; her father’s mental illness distorted its doctrines to his personal will.
Westover’s experience with her education is a beacon of light in her desolate upbringing. Her story brings strong sense of satisfaction to the readers as we watch her work for something so out of her grasp and be rewarded in bounteous ways. Before you think she was a natural genius hiding away in the mountains of Idaho just waiting for the perfect chance to prove herself, think again. She admits to wrestling with basic algebra for many months as a sixteen-year-old, her first try at the ACT is not impressive, she works hard to bring herself to a passing level. Even then, her effort doesn’t stop there. Westover’s first day of college is the first time she has ever set foot in a classroom and the learning curve alone threatens her place there. She doesn’t know how to study, talk to other students and teachers, or even take notes. Time and again she almost fails, but she is resilient. She goes on to become a Fulbright’s scholar and eventually earned a PhD from Cambridge by the time she is 28. Westover’s transformation as a person really starts happening once she decides her education is important and she takes it in her own hands. It is a joy to watch her bloom once planted firmly in her element.
Educated doesn’t speak with the same objectivity that Jeanette Wells does in The Glass Castle but her story is much more multidimensional and narrates a timeline twice as long. Still I was impressed by her honesty to admit her own mistakes and to show where she had been happy and satisfied in her younger formative years. But in the end, I was still sad. For days I chewed on the narrative Westover offered up. I wanted to make sense of it for her, not to justify any abuses of power but to understand what happened and find a happy ending for her. I’m still not sure I’ve settled my thoughts. This will be one I think on often.
Violence: Medium Language: Low Adult Content: Low