Loved it! 😍

Tara Westover's honest retelling of her upbringing and her attempts to escape the brutal binds of family is a literary tour de force.

There are not many memoirs written by young women which can leave you reeling but Tara Westover's story does in its depiction of a life of restriction, violence and ignorance.

There was so much about this book that was gripping; from the examination by Tara of incidents from her childhood to her relationships with her father, mother and brother, Shawn, to her determination to leave and become educated. Tara is frank and honest in her narratorial style and I found her writing to be tight in that it was explorative of her feelings but was not overly emotional in her discussion of the events. I think that she leaves you to decide what to think on the strength of what she is presenting you and there is a sense that she is stating facts, an honest representation of remembrances as she sees them. She is not playing for sympathy or pity as some of the experiences that she has are quite violent and debilitating - she presents them, leaves them with you to digest and moves on to the next one as there is a lot of fodder from her time living in Idaho.

Some of this narrative left me dumbfounded. It is not the fact that she is not sent to school but rather the fact that she is not really educated at home, this not being a priority at all. This makes her accomplishments all the more astonishing as she has studied at some of the most prestigious educational institutions in the world and has ostensibly achieved this through hard work and determination. And all of this achievement has occurred whilst dragging around an inordinate amount of emotional baggage. It really is quite an inspirational story in terms of what you can achieve in the face of seemingly impossible odds if you put your mind to it.

There is discussion of mental illness in the book as many members seem to have issues or conditions which, with treatment, may not have made themselves manifest in such severe terms. There is mention of Mormonism and its tenets, the following of which influenced Tara's life. None of it is judgemental though and I liked that about this book - Tara wants to share her story and it feels cathartic in essence rather than an overt criticism of what was wrong.

And this book shows there was a lot to share.

Reviewed by

It's not easy to sum up who I am, enough to make me interesting anyway, so what's essential to know? I love to read. I love to review. I love to write and blog at scuffedgranny.com. Short stories and poems are my main writing successes, winning runner-up plaudits on Reedsy Prompts and Vocal.media.