I came to this book without high expectations: I can’t relate to people with catholic upbringing and I have no reference points to judge their experience. But I am glad I stuck to the end. Tara Westover tells a compelling story about her childhood haunted by dogmatism, a fanatically religious father and sibling abuse, and her struggles to walk a journey to fulfil potential.
When I first started the book, I nearly dismissed the story right off the bat. Not born and raised religious, I couldn’t emotionally grapple with the elements unfolded at the beginning: why mentioning those mountains, the small county, the junkyard, six siblings, an authoritative father and a timid mother? I soon learned that these elements are quite essential to make up a contrast to what most people take for granted. The mountains and the people are similar to a vast bubble that holds up the religious and ‘repressive’ practice the author went through. There was no doctors, no modern medicine, no public schools. People preferred to believe in what they wanted to believe. Hence in that place, there was barely any connection to ideas, truth and modernity. Fundamentalist Mormonism compounded by the father’s bipolar disorder dominated everything of the family.
For one, it must be painful to experience two most valuable things for humans – personhood and family – at an odds with each other, especially when one has to choose one over another. The dilemma the author had to deal with was an extremely disheartening one: to declaim her family means uncritically discarding what she grew to believe, the newfound personal truth that had alleviated her from past shame and constant self-deprecation. But to insist upon this truth means she had to reject the old teaching and turn down what her father demanded her to do: to return to those spiritual rituals she found too repelling to be justified. I guess it all came from the power of knowledge and education, as Tara Westover said herself in the book. Once we learn to reason with ourselves, we learn to think for our own good. And having thinking power is transformative for a person. No wonder she sees no way back.
I gave a four-star to the book because, as I said, I personally cannot relate much to what the author has experienced as a child, although I built up a bond with the story eventually. Overall, Tara’s self-discovery was captured beautifully in this book, and I truly enjoyed Tara’s story and even noticed myself a bit dumbfounded approaching to the end.
Siming Lan 