Book No. 45 of 2020
What a remarkable, eye-opening book. I had rather ambivalent expectations for this book, as I do for all ubiquitous bestsellers, but this surprised me in so many ways.
Westover’s writing is shockingly beautiful and evocative, so much so that it sometimes reads like fiction, and she very effectively illustrates for the reader the feeling of shifting realities, of being gaslit and lied to, and of the shame and shock that accompanies learning basic facts about the world that contradict everything you’ve been told.
The whole book, which is hard to put down (but my cat tried her very best to make me do so, succeeding multiple times), is like a vivid retelling of Plato’s allegory of the cave. It contains so many layers of insight into religious fundamentalism, dogmatic ignorance, and the radiating effects of abuse, and Westover’s odyssey from abject ignorance to the highest echelons of academia is, cliched as it sounds, truly inspiring.
Similar Reads
I kept drawing connections between this and Susan Fowler’s memoir, Whistleblower—both books chronicle their writers’ autodidactic journeys from inadequate homeschooling to worlds far beyond what they could ever have fathomed, and how their experiences shaped how they see the world.