Tuesday, June 25, 2019

Educated

Nonfiction by Tara Westover.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Well, this must be memoir month for me! This is the fourth one I've read recently.

I borrowed this from my sister-in-law, who assured me it was really good, although the brief synopsis-- "a story of a woman's educational journey" --sounded terrible. Fortunately, it was not terrible.

This story, like The Sound of Gravel, was about a girl growing up in a crazy fringe-group-Mormon family. But Tara's father was not a polygamist; he was just a paranoid fundamentalist who wanted to live off the grid. Tara's family was afraid of being under the government's control, which meant avoiding many things, such as schools and doctors. Tara and her siblings were "homeschooled," which to her mom and dad meant, "taught to read and then put to work."

Just like the other pair of similar memoirs I just read (All at Sea and Happiness) I couldn't help comparing these two books as well. So this story was good, but not quite as good as the other one.



(By the way, I'm aware that normal Mormons are not like Tara's or Ruthie's family, any more than normal Christians are like the crazies who protest soldiers' funerals. All the real Mormons I've ever met are perfectly nice folks.)

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