In urging me to read *An Education*, folks suggested I’d like it for a few reasons: the celebration of the university as the epicentre of ideas and learning (which I don’t hold to be true, but people must think I hold to be true); the fascination of the memoir genre in self-consciously commenting on what can be remembered and what must be fabricated (and the blurring of both) that recalls my enjoyment of historical fiction; and the irresistible lure of a cascading catalogue of trauma and violence, that predictably pulls the reader in wondering what new horror might be visited upon our protagonist.
I did like the book. And for the reasons predicted by my friends and book-recommenders. Though I’d say the first suggestion – and one blatantly made by the title (and certainly in the marketing of the book) – that this book is about the educational transformation wrought by the university, is misleading. Very little of the book is spent at the physical space of the university, and Tara, our protagonist (I suppose in a memoir we don’t call them protagonist so much as author?), seems ambivalent about what the university itself offered her in terms of education or transformation. Rather, and I appreciated this, her ‘education’ takes place in the shift from home to university, the conceptual journey as much as the physical. Sure she learns facts and explores ideas in ways never open or offered to her before, but the book focuses much more on how the space and culture of the university transforms her sense of self and what might be possible for her self, rather than what facts she accumulates.
To step back – by her account, Tara is raised in the Idaho mountains by parents who neither send her to school nor offer formal education at home. Instead she spends her childhood working in the family junkyard and navigating the twin dangers of a physically abusive brother and an emotionally abusive father, and the effects of this abuse on her sense of self and worth. Much is made in the press coverage of the fact that her parents are ‘survivalists’ preparing for the end of days, but I’d caution that the book doesn’t make as much of this aspect of her childhood as the marketers might have you believe, so if you’re hoping for a catalogue of food and fuel stockpiling, you’ll get some of that, but the narrative recognizes the gratuity of these moments of her life and rather than emphasize her difference from the reader, seems intent on demonstrating that while the particulars of her experience may be extreme, the experience ad effect of living in abuse is altogether common.
Long sentence!
Anyway. It’s not a perfect book and I have some complaints. It fits well with the other books in this genre in that it…
And that’s where I left this post when I started writing it two weeks ago. So I’ll have to trust past Erin that the novel fits well in the genre. And that I have complaints. I bet you have complaints! What didn’t you like about the book? Let’s share responsibility for finishing this post…
As evidenced by the three stickers of award-endorsing-approval on the cover, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, by Benjamin Alire Saenz, is well regarded by people who control stickers on books. Also by all of the young adults on the internet. And then all the readers on Goodreads. Why do they like it? It’s a romance, a bildungsroman, a redemption for the weirdo (and don’t all readers of YA identify as weirdos, themselves?), an affirmation of family, an exploration of identity in all its shapes. 
Literary Vice 