Educated: A Memoir

This book is a must to read for everyone. Westover's writing is superb and demonstrates themes of struggles and overcoming said struggles.Before this book, I used to believe that symbolism was a lazy writing method, but the way Westover writes with it is absolutely amazing. Even as you read the last chapter, you still fondly remember all the details from chapter 1.

Delivered on time. The quality of the book was good, as described

I LOVED this book! One of those that is hard to put down. It is so deep on so many levels. I highly recommend.

nice book

A memoir written in the most honest way I have ever seen, touching and unforgettable. Thank you Tara, God bless you 🙏🏼

This book is just fabulous. A must read to everyone. Quality of the printing was great!

The writing is excellent

The book is a little heavy and uninteresting to begin with and doesn't hook you instantly, but when it does, oh my god, believe me when I say this, if you read it a little each day and let the words get absorbed in you, you'll find pure bliss. The details in this book has amazed me, disgusted me and overpowered me through the span of these 2 months. Nothing here looked superficial, everything was very raw, human like and that's what made it special. The art of storytelling is an amazing thing, it quite makes or breaks the experience of readers. I would indeed say, this was possibly the best book I've read in my entire life till now, (that includes all the mind boggling non-fiction novels too). Being a PhD student myself, was the reason I picked up this book, but when I finished it, I would understand the real value of 'Education' in life. How it changes a person, like really the 'self' of that person. It's like-'At most, there are 2 persons living inside this body, with one fractured mind. When it was time, she left, she stayed in the mirror. The incidents, decisions that followed were entirely mine, not hers anymore.'

I'd had this book sitting on my shelf for a while - it had been recommended in many articles so I had high expectations.The book was first published in 2018, it has 377 pages and 40 chapters. First impression is good as there are some top quality quotes of praise at the start.I hadn't appreciated that so much of the book would be about the author's childhood. Her education at home was very limited and she describes the varying levels of work she had to do to survive.The writing is engaging and the reader is encouraged to care about Tara. The narrative is first person so is very personal - you can't help but feel her experiences with her.Alongside the straightforward narrative. the reader has to look behind the writing as the motives and emotions are a huge part of this story. Tara rarely judges and simply accepts most of her life - it's the reader who is given the space to analyse and has time to stand back to get the full picture.Tara's life is hard to comprehend - she tells us about it sensitivity yet managing to retain a disconnect that appears to be her coping mechanism. She thought that everything was normal and that there were no options. Its inspiring to read about her small moments of realisation when she starts to acknowledge what is happening, accepts them as wrong and starts to consider alternatives. I was surprised there wasn't one big moment of rebellion away from her world but just small movements and tiny mind shifts until one day she found she had gone far enough mentally not to have to go back. This multitude of tiny steps are almost imperceptible until she learns to believe in herself - this creates a wave of emotion for the reader and it can be seen how life changing the process was for Tara.Brilliant account of a life turning towards the world rather than running away from it.This is all well written as a retrospective account and it is as I would normally expect a memoir to be - evenly paced and with a consistent tone. This book seems to do so much more though - at the start the narrative is naïve and basic, as the author grows the phrasing becomes more confident and articulate. This development is cleverly written.