Educated by Tara Westover — Memoir Review
Educated (2018) by Tara Westover is a memoir that reads like a novel, though its events are all too real. It spent over two years on the New York Times bestseller list, was translated into dozens of languages, and was chosen as a book of the year by nearly every major publication. It is the story of a woman who grew up in a radical survivalist family in the mountains of Idaho, never set foot in a classroom until she was seventeen, and went on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University.
The book is not, however, a simple triumph-over-adversity narrative. Westover is too intelligent and too honest to write that book. Educated is about the cost of transformation, the pain of leaving home, and the question of whether it is possible to love the people who hurt you. It asks hard questions about loyalty, memory, and the price of self-invention — and it refuses to provide easy answers.
The World of Buck’s Peak
Tara Westover grew up on Buck’s Peak, a mountain in rural Idaho. Her father, Gene, was a Mormon survivalist who believed that the government, the public schools, the medical establishment, and the entire outside world were agents of the devil. He stockpiled food and ammunition, prepared for the End of Days, and refused to send his children to school. His worldview was internally consistent and utterly impervious to outside information — a closed system that made leaving it an act of extraordinary courage.
Tara’s mother, Faye, was a herbalist and midwife. She delivered babies and treated illnesses with tinctures and poultices, avoiding hospitals at all costs. She was intelligent and capable but subordinate to her husband’s authority. The family operated a junkyard, where the children worked in dangerous conditions. Tara’s brothers suffered severe injuries — falls, burns, gashes — that went untreated. The family’s rejection of modern medicine meant that injury was a normal part of life, and the line between acceptable risk and outright danger was constantly being redrawn.
Tara’s father was not a monster in a simple sense. He believed he was protecting his family. He was devoted, hardworking, and convinced of the righteousness of his cause. But his beliefs also caused profound harm. He refused to wear seat belts, drove drunk, and put his children in situations that led to serious accidents. He denied his daughter access to education, medical care, and the basic knowledge that would allow her to make her own choices. Westover’s portrait of her father is one of the memoir’s greatest achievements: she shows him as both loving and damaging, principled and deluded, without reducing him to either category.
The Violence
The most disturbing passages in the memoir involve Tara’s brother Shawn. Shawn was charismatic and loving one moment and violently abusive the next. He twisted Tara’s arm behind her back, held her head in a toilet, threatened her with knives, and called her a whore and a prostitute. The abuse escalated over years, and Tara learned to navigate it the way people in abusive families learn — by reading his moods, anticipating his triggers, and trying to stay out of his way.
The abuse was not hidden. It happened in front of other family members. But no one intervened. Tara’s mother saw what was happening and looked away. Her father was told and refused to believe it. The family’s code of silence and loyalty meant that Shawn’s violence was tolerated, normalized, and eventually forgotten. This is one of the most painful aspects of the book: not the abuse itself, but the complicity of everyone around it.
Westover’s treatment of Shawn is one of the memoir’s greatest achievements. She does not demonize him. She shows his charm, his intelligence, his capacity for kindness. She also shows the damage he caused. The reader is left with the uncomfortable understanding that people can be both loving and cruel, and that these truths can coexist without canceling each other out.
The Awakening
Tara’s journey out of this world began with music. Her brother Tyler, the first to leave the family, played classical music on CDs he had hidden. When Tara heard Bach for the first time, she felt something shift. She began to teach herself math from an old textbook. She took the ACT without preparation and scored well enough to be admitted to Brigham Young University. The moment of her departure is both triumphant and terrifying — she is leaving everything she has ever known for a world she cannot even imagine.
The culture shock was overwhelming. Tara did not know what the Holocaust was. She had never heard of the Civil Rights Movement. She did not know how to use a computer, how to write a paper, how to take notes. She was ashamed of her clothes, her accent, her ignorance. She felt like a fraud who would be discovered at any moment. Her description of her first year at BYU — the humiliation, the confusion, the slow dawning of a new world of knowledge — is some of the most powerful writing in the book.
But she was also extraordinarily intelligent and determined. A professor recognized her potential and encouraged her to apply for a scholarship to Cambridge University. She went, struggled, adapted, and eventually earned a PhD. The story of her academic journey is remarkable, but Westover does not let it become a simple success story.
The Cost
The central tension of Educated is that Tara’s education came at the cost of her family. The more she learned, the more she saw the problems in her family. The more she saw, the harder it was to maintain relationships with the people who raised her. Education, for Westover, is not an unqualified good — it is a force that separates her from the people she loves.
Her father accused her of being corrupted by Satan. Her mother, who had once been her closest ally, eventually cut her off. Her sister joined the family in ostracizing her. Tara was forced to choose between her family and her sanity. She chose sanity, but the choice nearly destroyed her. The memoir’s treatment of this dilemma is morally complex and emotionally devastating.
The memoir’s final scenes are devastating. Tara realizes that her mother will never acknowledge the truth about Shawn. Her father will never accept her choices. Her family has made its decision, and she is no longer part of it. The cost of education is not just tuition — it is the loss of the people who raised you.
Major Themes
Education as Transformation
The book’s title is Educated, not Educated as a description of a state but as a process. Education, for Westover, is not about acquiring facts or credentials. It is about learning to think for yourself, to question what you have been told, to see the world from perspectives other than the one you were given.
This kind of education is dangerous. It destabilizes everything you thought you knew. It separates you from the people who do not share your new understanding. Westover does not present education as an unqualified good. It is necessary, it is transformative, and it is painful.
Memory and Truth
Westover is acutely aware of the unreliability of memory. She includes a note at the beginning of the book acknowledging that memory is not a perfect record. She writes about events she cannot fully remember and about the gap between her recollection and her family’s. The memoir is not a definitive account but her account.
This self-awareness is one of the book’s strengths. Westover does not pretend to have perfect knowledge of what happened. She reconstructs events from her own memory, from conversations with family members, from documents and photographs. She acknowledges the impossibility of objective truth in a story so emotionally charged.
Identity and Belonging
The question at the heart of Educated is: who am I? Tara was raised to be a certain kind of person — obedient, faithful, self-sufficient, suspicious of the outside world. Her education gave her the tools to become someone else. But the person she became had no home to return to.
Westover describes her sense of being split between two worlds, belonging fully to neither. She is too educated for Buck’s Peak and too provincial for Cambridge. She is too traumatized to be comfortable anywhere. The memoir does not resolve this split. It simply names it.
FAQ
Is Educated suitable for young readers? The memoir contains scenes of physical and emotional abuse that may be disturbing. It is typically recommended for older teens and adults.
How accurate is Educated? Westover acknowledges the fallibility of memory in her author’s note. Her family has disputed some events, but the book has been extensively fact-checked by the publisher.
What happened to Tara Westover after the book? She continues to write and speak publicly. Her second book has been announced but not yet published.
Was Educated made into a movie? A film adaptation has been discussed but has not been produced as of 2026.
Also explore: Our guide to Biography and Memoir and our review of Sapiens.