Educated: A Memoir

Tara Westover's account of growing up essentially uneducated in a rural survivalist Mormon family in Idaho has been already much analyzed. Despite this, I found it very much lived up to my expectations. Tara is thoughtful and her portrayal of the different stages of her life, from naive acceptance, to teenage rebellion, insecure undergraduate and finally Cambridge doctorage student are each nuanced and well-written. She clearly has strived for an unbiased but personal account of her childhood, buttressing her memoir in several places on her brother's memories as well.

I also found this book terrifying to read – there are two major car accidents, two serious burns, more traumatic head injuries than you can shake a stick at and a handful of broken bones, all essentially untended. It's a miracle no one got tetanus