An incredible story, at times chilling, yet authentic. Education (Feltrinelli) is the autobiographical novel by Tara Westover, now 39 years old, and her parable in which she growing up in an American family of Mormon fanatics in the mountains of Idaho, without ever going to school, and then went on to obtain a doctorate at Cambridge.
The education of the title is that which life, with its immense load of moral and physical pain, has imparted to her, to the point of transforming her into another woman, compared to the girl dominated by a bipolar and possessed father, and victim of a violent brother. Last of seven siblings, Tara, who was not even registered at birth, she reached adolescence almost illiterate, totally devoid of education, forced even as a child to work in her father’s scrapyard, subjected to absurd dangers. The father’s fanaticism went so far as to prepare for the end of the world by accumulating supplies and weapons and to deny official medicine, so much so that even when faced with serious illnesses and accidents (and there were many without safety regulations, at work and in cars) he didn’t want anyone to ever consult a doctor trusting in divine intervention and homeopathic medicine operated by his wife, a self-taught healer who will end up turning the sale of her herbal remedies into a business.
Yet that little girl dressed in awkward clothes, which were supposed to mortify her femininity, sees the aspiration to be something else arise within her, and, although hindered by her family, she manages to take the exams to enter college. He gradually comes into contact with another world and falls in love with knowledge, especially philosophers. AND she also develops positions contrary to those of her family, who oppose her to the point of considering her possessed and to break off relations with her. A compelling, clear narrative, on the edge of memory, which brings together disconcerting facts and excruciating emotions, without rhetoric, but with shared lucidity.
