Educated: A Memoir by Tara WestoverMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
The only thing from this entire thing that I didn't believe was that a Mormon girl wouldn't know who the Mormon Tabernacle Choir was. Her father was a radical but she still attended a mainstream Mormon church. They never watched General Conference? A Mormon would have at least recognized MoTab from General Conference.
There were a few times she tried to make mormonism more palatable to the nevermos (people who have never been mormon) reading. For instance she called it a "christening" when its just a baby blessing. I don't know what a christening is but a baby blessing is when the father lays his hands on the baby and gives them a name and a blessing, usually in front of the congregation. Another time she used the word "congregation" wehn she should have used "ward. But I'm being nitpicky, I know how strange mormonism is to those who don't know anything about it.
She doesn't say it in the memoir, but I think it was her junior year at BYU she lost her faith in mormonism completely. She mentions tasting her first coffee and wine which is a huge fucking deal to those who were once "true believing mormons" (as is swearing [at least for me], which I'm still working on). That's probably not all that jarring to nevermos out there.
The author didn't do a good enough job of setting the scene because I had a hard time picturing everything.
This is the first memoir I've read where the author admits that their memory is faulty and has gotten several different versions from family members. That's actually how memory works and it was refreshing to see it.
Winner Shannon's Choice Awards 2018:
Best Memoir/Autobiography
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