‘Educated’ by Tara Westover has been something of a publishing phenomenon since it first hit the bookshelves in 2018. The story of a young woman who leaves her survivalist family in Idaho to discover education and attend University in the UK, it spent two years on the New York Times bestseller list, and even lead to ‘Time’ magazine naming Westover as one of it’s people of the year in 2019. But what is the secret of the book’s success?

Tara Westover is brought up by Mormon fundamentalists in Idaho, isolated from the world and with no access to education or healthcare. She suffers physical abuse at the hands of her brother, with her family refusing to intervene. It’s a fairly grim existence, and Westover shows incredible emotional resilience to survive it.

The turning point is when she discovers a love of learning. After setting foot in her first classroom at the age of seventeen, she never really looks back, eventually getting a Phd from Cambridge University. It’s an incredible turnaround from where she started.

Not only do readers love the journey that Westover goes on, from a scrapyard to a university, but the book is also incredibly well written. She describes her experiences with such a calm authority, and it’s obvious that she studied narrative form and how to pace a story. It’s a memoir, but it has the pace of a work of bestselling fiction.

It got me thinking about other memoirs about survival, about narrators who go a journey. Readers love well written books where they go on a journey of self discovery with the narrator, so I have compiled a list of books like educated.

The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls

The last days by Ali Millar

Unfollow: A journey from hatred to hope' by Megan Phelps-Roper

Don’t let’s go to the dogs tonight by Alexandra Fuller

The Liars Club by Mary Karr

The Sound of Gravel by Ruth Wariner

North of Normal: A Memoir of My Wilderness Childhood, My Unusual Family, and How I Survived Both by Cea Sunrise Person

So there you have it - a list of books like ‘educated.’ From living a nomadic lifestyle, to surviving a Jehovah’s Witness upbringing in Scotland, the Canadian wilderness and Mormon cults, South African Tobacco farms and sweltering Texan towns, a Baptist church sect to Appalachian Ohio.

There are common threads running through these books - life lived according to religious teachings, abject poverty and despairs, a childhood of neglect and chaos, abuse and dysfunctional families.

But perhaps the most common link between theses memoirs is resilience. The strength of the human spirit, and the ability of humans to learn and question their upbringing. Many of the memoirists also discover learning, and how it has the ability to transform your life.

There is plenty of hardship in the pages of these books, and your emotions will at times be shaken, but the ultimate feeling you’ll leave with is one of hope. These are well written books that allow you as a reader to go on a journey of self discovery with the narrator.

I hope you enjoy these memoirs, and if you can think of more that I might add, please add them in the comments below.