*Please note: There are spoilers...

This review is from the NutterMother April Book Club

Diamant’s book, The Red Tent, sheds light on Dinah, a minor figure in the Old Testament, who is given a voice and a history that recounts the role of a Haran woman in the ancient time.  It is, openly, an imaginative retelling of her life story, but expressive in its ability to capture a journey through the passing of time, through traditions and experiences all fuelled by the  great loves and great sorrows of an epic family.

Perhaps a detriment to some readers, Diamant’s novel is bursting with description and kept at a rather slow pace. However, I never found that to hinder the novel at all. In fact, I think that is what makes this story so special.

The description of mundane family life is expressive in its recounting of all the underlying tensions and intricate relationships between men and women, wives and sisters, parents and children, sons and daughters.  What we learn from this is not only to appreciate the simple pleasures of life, but the importance of a gesture, or a word, between two people. Dinah embodies the example that we can find peace and happiness by just living. We do not need to live great lives beyond the expectations of our families and we can find solace and comfort in just being who we are.

I found the most interesting of these subtleties was the way in which Dinah’s perception of her family life as a child changed as she progressed into adulthood. Her father Jacob, for example, was loved with adoration and the fondness of a child who puts their parent on a pedestal. However as the years progressed we witness Dinahs perspectives change as she saw her father later as just a man with faults and insecurities parallel to any other person. It is the simple illusion of how life experience changes our perception of the world around us, yet the way in which Diamant evokes it to the reader is, again, what makes it special.

This novel, most importantly, is about the bond of women. It is about matriarchy and the role women have being the heart blood of a family. The Red Tent is a powerful place, more than just a location for girls to become women, and for women to bare children; it is a place where they make and live by their own rules outside of man’s society.  This society within the Red Tent is a powerful place embedded with symbolism, from the significance of dreams, to the role of nature and the moon, the importance of childbirth. It interweaves generations of beliefs into a culture all its own, into traditions that can be passed down all with the confines of the Red Tent.

The novel speaks heavily about tradition and one’s ability to hold strong to their faith and practices, it is an integral part of the Red Tent and the survival of their culture is dependent on the community of women. Because the women embody the very make up of a society, it illustrates the fragility of tradition over the passing of time. As the years progressed we saw how the community of women changed as Dinah grew older. As her brothers brought their new wives to the Red Tent, it became apparent that these outside women represent the difficulty of maintaining a culture by the inclusion of different viewpoints.

By the end of novel The Red tent became a commentary on the dying of tradition.  Dinah’s own, personal story, is a reflection of that. As she was “forgotten in the house of Jacob” we learn of the retelling of her story continues in secret through some of the women of her camp. Her niece Gera is a simple example that even through the most terrible of circumstances, some traditions and stories will never be lost.

And as much as I really enjoyed this book, I really enjoyed the ability to go beyond its narrative, to wiki all the sons of Jacob as I read a long, and I felt like I was able to get glimpses into their lives and their stories beyond this one. It made reading the book terribly interesting because the greater story of Jacob and his twelve sons gives more life to the world Diamant is presenting us.

Your thoughts?