Chris Dietzel's Reviews > Educated

I didn't want to like this book. At a certain point, you read enough memoirs about bad childhoods that you start to lump them all into one group of misery. That said, I admit this was easily one of the most captivating memoirs of a bad childhood that I've read.

On a side note, if Westover was honest with herself, this book would be titled "Neglect and Abuse." The education she managed to get is remarkable, but it doesn't define her like her upbringing did, it wasn't a path out of the abuse and neglect because she still endures it as she's educated, and it doesn't help her escape the abuse because she keeps going back to it. Using 'Educated' as the title is a nice way to try and frame it, but this book is entirely about severe childhood neglect and abuse, not her education.

Also, after reading this I've read interviews with people who know both the author and her family and it sounds like there are a lot of blurred lines between reality and fiction. It's impossible to say what's real and what's fiction, but there are at least a dozen times in the book where Westover herself admits her recollections about various events are entirely different than other peoples, confessing that her memory and perception are unreliable, so the fact she's unsure about so much important stuff makes it really uncomfortable to read the extreme types of things she's willing to write about her family, much of which is disputed. It's still a great book with powerful moments and themes, but there is also a very clear feeling of James Frey (A Million Little Pieces) fiction here.