Book Review and Recommendation
Only once before (*) have I gone through a book at such a fast pace, eager to read what’s next, while awed by the craft of writing – a style so simple, yet so gripping, it could not have been learned; it must’ve been a gift from the “gods”.
The subject of the book is what happens to a person who is blessed with rationality and cursed with having been born in a family of religious fundamentalists.
Fundamentalism is a devil’s brew of stupidity mixed in with various mental disorders – paranoia, schizophrenia, narcissism, and more. And the fundamentalism of Tara Westover’s family was extreme and vicious. They kept her from going to school, taught her to never wear a seat belt, constantly put her life in danger in the belief that the Lord would save her, and never took her to a doctor, even when she was badly mangled.
Although present-day Americans, Tara’s family believed in the inferiority of women as a godly commandment, and visited upon her unspeakable hurt and humiliation with perfectly “good intentions”. I won’t go into the details in order not to spoil it for the reader, but the events themselves are not what the book is about. It is the meaning of it all.
Tara survived, and managed to get a doctorate from a most prestigious university (despite never having gone to elementary or secondary school.) But that is not the point of the book. It is the monumental struggle it takes to break out of the vicious grip of a fundamentalist family. The will to resist is not enough – only someone with extraordinary gifts, like Tara, could succeed. Even then, the outcome is by no means certain (**)
The book is ‘Educated’. The author is Tara Westover. (***)
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*) That other time it was ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel Garcia Márquez.
**) I have not mentioned the name of the author’s religion because it doesn’t matter. The phenomenon is universal.
***) Thanks to my friend Ali Habbak for suggesting this book to me.
يمكنك دعم الموقع من هنا
مؤسسة ندى لحماية الفتيات
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