Educated 

Educated 

Author: Tara Westover  

Publisher‏: ‎ Windmill Books (1 November 2018); Windmill Books 

Language‏: ‎ English 

Paperback‏: ‎ 400 pages 

Audible Narrator: Julia Whelan 

Listening Length: 12 hours and 10 minutes 

Some stories hit you that hard. Others make you think. But very few hover over you, shaping your thoughts, saturating your emotions, and colouring your conversations. For me, Educated was one such book. The story not only managed to surprise and scare me, but also left a lasting impression on me. 

The story unfolds in layers. It feels like riding shotgun on a journey that begins on a rugged Idaho mountain and ends in the echoing halls of Cambridge University. 

The youngest of seven, Tara grows up in the wilderness of Idaho in a family that’s suspicious of virtually everything: public school, hospitals, and even birth certificates. Her father, Gene, runs a scrapyard and stockpiles for Armageddon, and her mother, Faye, is a gentle midwife. The children are taught to distrust doctors as “Satan’s agents”. 

The reader experiences a deeply troubled childhood, where puncturing hope, dismantling dreams, and surviving on the bare minimum are the way of life. It’s a world where preparing for the apocalypse is more realistic than receiving a math education. Tara’s early life is filled with scraped knees, exploding junkyards, herbal remedies for gaping wounds, and a kind of silence that cloaks abuse, emotional manipulation and guilt-tripping in its many layers. Through sheer grit and gumption to succeed, Tara launches herself into another realm, only to spiral upward and forward. Academia remoulds her, but then it comes at a cost. Family bonds fray. Loyalty wrestles with self-preservation. Memory becomes a battlefield. 

Westover’s voice is raw, thoughtful, and sharply honest. She writes not to accuse but to understand, even as she holds a mirror to generational wounds. Her story is emotional without being sentimental and wise without ever preaching. At times, the pace slows in introspective chapters—you might find yourself tapping the brakes when you’re eager to race ahead. Some readers may wish for more detail on the “how” of her academic brilliance—how she jumped from basic arithmetic to philosophical treatises in just a few years. But that’s a minor quibble. Because at its core, Educated isn’t just a memoir; it’s about what it takes to rewrite your story: the thrill, terror, the gut, and so much more. What it takes to unlearn fear or shame. And how hard it is to walk away from everything you’ve ever known—family, faith, even yourself—to become someone else, even if all your mind does is trip you with doubts, guilt and anxieties. 

The cast is a medley of characters, each with its own defining arc and quiet moments that linger in memory long after the book is finished. Apart from Tara’s parents, it would be her first boyfriend, Charles, a kind-hearted boy who becomes “the first friend from that other world” her survivalist father had so carefully shut her off from. Tara’s older brother, Tyler, who escapes their off-grid life to go to college, and another brother, Shawn, who becomes increasingly violent and abusive, personifying everything wrong with the family, are some of the other characters. 

Listening to Educated on Audible, you’re guided by the ever-talented Julia Whelan, a Golden Voice narrator who won the 2019 Audie Award for Best Female Narrator for her performance here. 

Whelan’s voice is calm yet vibrant—you can practically feel Tara’s uncertainty in that first classroom, later turning into quiet determination. 

One of the most compelling books I tuned into this year. Can’t recommend it enough.