Just finished the audiobook and loved it. From the very beginning we can’t help but await reckonning and it comes but it’s far from any cliche. A greaJust finished the audiobook and loved it. From the very beginning we can’t help but await reckonning and it comes but it’s far from any cliche. A great story line and nicely developed characters make it a very absorbing read. It’s a very intimate novel, we live in the protagonists’ heads for a while so we get to understand their logic and their motivation. It’s a novel that literally let’s you walk in another’s shoes. I like that about fiction when it helps the reader develop empathy and better understanding as well as deepen our sensitivity towards the other fellow human beings. ...more
This is a very well written and a very interesting memoir about the complex, distant father that Steve Jobs was to Lisa Brennan. The book joins its grThis is a very well written and a very interesting memoir about the complex, distant father that Steve Jobs was to Lisa Brennan. The book joins its great predecessors such as the Educated: a memoir by Tara Westover or We are all shipwrecks: a memoir by Kelly Grey Carlisle that are non-fiction books that read like fiction. All the parts that make a great and compelling read are in place: an unusual and intriguing story, very high quality of writing and editing, maturity of the author able to transcend her experience and personal suffering and able to present an analytical, well-balanced piece of writing that is completely gripping. We cannot avoid rooting for the protagonist of this story and we get the satisfaction by observing how in spite of great adversity, she grows, matures, comes into her own. Lisa Brennan gives justice to the complexity of her father and presents a portrait that is far from simplistic and at the same time very vivid, clear and oddly in accordance with his own rules of esthetics: sparse and minimalistic, devoid of sentimentality. The subject matter of the story, the distant, at times cruel or even malicious father and the daughter who keeps seeking his approval, acceptance, admiration, love and who is denied this love by the parent, will resonate with many readers. The act of describing of the process of her coming into her own and moving beyond the negative formative experiences and its product - the book offers hope and might be as therapeutic to readers as it has been to its writer. As to the question posed many times: was Lisa, the first computer, named after the daughter of Steve Jobs? Yes and no. Watch 2015 documentary Steve Jobs the Man in the Machine to find out. Excellent and highly recommended book that could be material for a new film all together....more
This is a memoir I have had trouble staying with. It contains a very compelling and interesting story and it is well written, and yet I can't stay focThis is a memoir I have had trouble staying with. It contains a very compelling and interesting story and it is well written, and yet I can't stay focused enough to finish it. I keep coming back to it as I know it is an excellent piece of writing. I wonder if it could be edited more to make it a tighter, better organized book. One cannot underestimate the importance of an excellent editor and perhaps this book could benefit from it. I hope to finish it as I find it a story worth reading. It is another biography of the anti-hero father and his daughter coming to grips with the many flaws and cruelties inflicted by a father who might be unstable because of his own childhood trauma and a mental illness. Kudos to all the daughters who survive their cruel fathers. It is good to know they can overcome the hurtful experiences and examine their own childhoods with an analytical eye. I am sure many readers will appreciated this book....more
This is a very soulful sorrowful book. It left me with the feeling of enormous sadness. It is about living and dying and how short life is and how someThis is a very soulful sorrowful book. It left me with the feeling of enormous sadness. It is about living and dying and how short life is and how some of us caught in the darkest events of history have so little preparation for what’s to come and no control over the events in our life. There is the element of being born into war, revolution, bloodshed and no ability to withstand it. Nahid saves herself but at the same time looses all sense of meaning and joy of life. It felt like life happened to her and before she knew it it was over. Written in beautiful prose and so well rendered it doesn’t feel like a translation at all. This is my top 2018 title....more
Everybody loves survivors' memoirs. We especially like to cheer them on their way to freeing themselves and finally making it. Tara Westover's story iEverybody loves survivors' memoirs. We especially like to cheer them on their way to freeing themselves and finally making it. Tara Westover's story is one such survivor's tale. What's unique about it is how she used the power of her intellect. This fantastically gifted, talented and brilliant young woman was deprived of a conventional education through normal schools by her extreme, paranoiac, religious zealot of a father who saw conspiracy of iluminati everywhere including public school system and healthcare system. His children were pulled out of schools, or never sent to one, never allowed to use doctors and hospitals even in the most life-threatening circumstances. She was educated instead through her life experiences within this very dramatic and abusive family whose particular brand of religion served to cover the subjugation and abuse of women. Her lessons were about paranoia, subjugation, fanaticism, humiliation and helplessness. The cognitive dissonance between what she was experiencing and what she was told her experience was, led her to a loss of herself. The fact that she kept journals helped her to discern what was real and what was not, but in view of eyewitnesses denying her accounts, she often was unsure and kept doubting herself. The required demanded loyalty to the crazy family almost destroyed her. Only through unbelievable power of the intellect and discerning thinking, when she finally decided to leave and enroll in college, she was able to start making sense of her life. I have never before read such heart-stopping and heart-wrenching book. I was reminded of Edward St. Aubyn's Patrick Melrose novels in which he reworked his particular trauma. Tara Westover is a gifted intellectual, an analytical thinker to whom a professor at Cambridge University referred as "pure gold" speaking of her power of thinking and reasoning. Through study of history and historians she was able to see many view points and discover that her own perspective was a valid thing. She then started to write her own history. It is a fast read, hard to put down page turner although at times one needs to stop, simply because the degree of intensity of terrible things happening is so high that the reader needs to take breaks. I am in complete awe of the power possessed by Tara Westover and her ability to overcome such deep trauma. All those who helped her, various professors along the course of her studies, deserve a great deal of appreciation for recognizing her abilities and giving a helping hand. Ultimately she obtained her education at Cambridge and Harvard universities which elevated her into the peaks of scholarly thinking and placed her among great thinkers as an equal. The revenge was sweet. However Tara Westover never stopped loving her family, she did her best trying to remove herself and to understand. This is simply a feat of marvel. I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes to read about adversity but also about intellectual pursuits.
Thank you NetGalley for loaning an electronic version of the reader's copy of this title....more
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