The Red Tent - Anita Diamant
I picked up this book before the 5-hour flight thinking - "oh, a biblical story, perfect to put me to sleep". But it wasn't until the plane touched the ground at San Francisco that I could put this book down. Excellent characterization, beautiful story telling.
Red Tent tells the story of Dinah, daughter of Jacob and sister to Joseph, two well-chronicled characters in the old testament. In the bible, she is briefly mentioned - her rape and subsequent rampage of Shechem by her brothers feature in Genesis 34. However, this book breathes life into her character - as Dinah is born, grows up, marries, grows old and is finally at peace with her life. She tells her mother's stories - sisters Leah, Rachel, Bilhah and Zilpah - how they each met and fell in love with Jacob. Their relationships with each other, with Jacob, their children. The births, the deaths and most important of all the times they spent together in the Red Tent. A place when women take refuge every new moon when their flow comes, to rest and recuperate, away from the men. The red tent is also where Dinah witnesses rivalries, compassion and feminism.
The book carries a deep foreboding vein - but that is to be expected of a tragedy. As with any books that chronicle a character's whole life from birth to death, this too left me very sad. No, not because she died or even that the story ended. But there is something about reading about somebody's life spanning years in a period of days that reinforces the "all life is immortal and insignificant" theme. And makes me bereave for the character's disillusions and loss of dreams. And brings home the realization that things that seem so important in the present, matter so little when you sum up your life at the very end ...
Good read. Highly recommended.
Red Tent tells the story of Dinah, daughter of Jacob and sister to Joseph, two well-chronicled characters in the old testament. In the bible, she is briefly mentioned - her rape and subsequent rampage of Shechem by her brothers feature in Genesis 34. However, this book breathes life into her character - as Dinah is born, grows up, marries, grows old and is finally at peace with her life. She tells her mother's stories - sisters Leah, Rachel, Bilhah and Zilpah - how they each met and fell in love with Jacob. Their relationships with each other, with Jacob, their children. The births, the deaths and most important of all the times they spent together in the Red Tent. A place when women take refuge every new moon when their flow comes, to rest and recuperate, away from the men. The red tent is also where Dinah witnesses rivalries, compassion and feminism.
The book carries a deep foreboding vein - but that is to be expected of a tragedy. As with any books that chronicle a character's whole life from birth to death, this too left me very sad. No, not because she died or even that the story ended. But there is something about reading about somebody's life spanning years in a period of days that reinforces the "all life is immortal and insignificant" theme. And makes me bereave for the character's disillusions and loss of dreams. And brings home the realization that things that seem so important in the present, matter so little when you sum up your life at the very end ...
Good read. Highly recommended.