28 novembre 2022
"An Education ” by Tara Westover is an autobiographical novel with an extraordinary plot. It is a story that engages the reader from the very first pages as it focuses on the author's lived experience within a Mormon family that lives as if suspended in time: her father totally rejects the support of technology and the use of drugs and medicines; he is not open to contact with the outside world. Tara's life proceeds no farther than the houses down in the valley and her village church. It is a nothingness formed by the sheet metal warehouse where Tara's father forces his children to work.
In a crescendo of fanaticism, fear and blind obedience on the part of her father and brother Shawn,Tara begins to glimpse a way out, thanks in part to the motivation of some of her brothers who have decided to abandon this senseless life and move to the city and begin a real education. It is from this moment on that the protagonist's inner dissension begins, because trying to emancipate herself is tantamount to being a teachable daughter. Tara finds herself at a crossroads where feelings of guilt and fragility await her.
However, the protagonist does not let herself be overwhelmed and in the end she is able to make final decisions about her future. The ending that awaits the reader is unsettling; a revenge of a personal nature that, however, also leaves much bitterness.
THE AUTHOR.
Tara Westover is an American essayist and historian, born in Idaho in 1986. After graduating from Brigham Young University, she won a fellowship to Cambridge, where she earned a Ph.D. in History. She is recognized worldwide for writing her first best-selling memoir known as Educated . Among numerous other awards, the autobiographical novel received two National Book Critics Circle Award nominations.
