Educated

A memoir about a girl raised in a rural, survivalist family who went on to go to college and earn a doctorate, what struck me more than anything else was Westover’s impeccably and breathlessly vivid writing style. The closest that could compare to her writing would be Fitzgerald, and her storytelling skill and ability, especially considering what educational background she came from, absolutely astounds me. The book explores themes of family and familial duty, of faith in relation to learning, and of mental illness and abuse, and even though almost no one shared her upbringing, anyone could empathize with her refreshing anecdotes and down-to-earth personality.

In pursuing knowledge, Westover ate the forbidden fruit of knowledge, and the cost of her fall from Eden was her family. She spent a great deal of time detailing the arcadian, rural bliss that she enjoyed as a child, living in a happy if ignorant Eden in the Idaho mountains. Then came the gradual unraveling of that Eden, in the form of her learning about the ugly side of people firsthand and of the secular alternative to Mormon fundamentalism. Most of modern readers are secular, and so many may see her achieving the education she’s achieved as a triumph – and yet for many who believe in a more conservative moral system, the triumph could very well be a Pyrrhic victory, and the bittersweet inconclusion to her story makes it that much more compelling.