In Hebrew literature, there is a form called Midrash which in essence is an exegesis on Hebrew texts. Even though I'm not Jewish, I would personally categorize this book as Midrash.

Why? Because Anita Diamant does not stray from the Jacob/Dinah story in the bible one whit. Many people who read this book and then go back to the biblical texts are surprised to find that there are household gods and concubines and that Jacob used some rather superstitious means to breed spotted goats, that Rachel claimed having her period to hide the gods hidden in the sacks from her father Laban and that Dinah must have been of some importance because she is one of the few women who gets mentioned more than a few verses worth in the Pentateuch.

Diamant uses her vast knowledge of the history of her faith and that time to flesh this story out in very real ways never perverting the original text. And in doing so she weaves a story of women and their bond with each other in a time and a place that is difficult to understand in our modern world but at the same time is fascinating. These characters linger with you long after the book is finished.

Without a doubt the most fascinating novel I've ever read about women's cycles. Period.

The familiar biblical story of Jacob and his family told by his only daughter, Dinah. How refreshing to read about the lives of the women for a change, especially the remarkable sisterhood they shared. In Part One, Dinah tells her mothers' stories--I say 'mothers' in the plural, because Jacob had four wives and they all shared the work of everyday life, including raising the children. The red tent was used for seclusion and rest during the first three days of their menstrual cycle and a shelter for giving birth. In Part Two, Dinah tells her own story--birth, childhood, coming of age, and falling in love with the prince of Shechem--with disastrous results. And Part Three relates her new life in Egypt and the birth of her son. Fascinating reading!

Historical fiction based on the biblical story of Jacob, as told through the eyes of Dinah, his youngest child and only daughter. In the Bible, Dinah has no voice, but Anita Diamant has provided a voice for her through this imaginative story of her life that offers a convincing portrait of a community of women in ancient times. The titular red tent is a place where women gather for rituals such as monthly cycles, recovery from illness, and childbirth.

For me, this book is a story of empowerment and strength. Dinah lived in a patriarchal society and we see it through her eyes. She would not have been privy to the men’s world, so the focus is on the female relationships and the connections among the women. Fertility, midwifery and childbirth are prominently featured, and Dinah becomes a respected midwife. It effectively evoked the ambiance of an ancient culture. The writing is beautifully descriptive, and the daily lives of the characters seemed believable. This book is filled with engaging characters and multifaceted relationships. While it is based on religious text, there is little formal “religion” portrayed and I did not find it didactic. Knowledge of the biblical story is somewhat helpful, but not required. A family tree of relationships among Jacob, his four wives, and thirteen children is provided.

Themes include storytelling, motherhood, tradition, memory, renewal, and the power of nature. Contains sex, violence (including murder and rape), and graphic descriptions of childbirth. This book helped me appreciate what life would have been like for women in those days and makes me very glad I live in the present time. Recommended to anyone interested in biblical fiction.

A vivid tale narrated in biblical style through the eyes of Jacob’s only daughter Dinah, a lesser known name in the great Book.

The narrative covers the life-span of Jacob, from his multiple marriages to his death, a side trip to Egypt covering Dinah’s life after she officially leaves the book of Genesis, and finally footnotes with Dinah’s passing. The author uses the Red Tent as the listening post where all these family stories, some predating Dinah herself, are narrated to her via her four mothers (Jacob’s four wives) when they gather for three days to menstruate together around the dawning of each full moon. This “synchronicity” of bodily functions to the movement of the moon does not get much mention in our 24/7 culture today. And the men, shepherds, as was Jacob’s occupation, are portrayed as masturbators and fornicators of any available woman (or sheep), hard negotiators for wives and dowry, and bloodthirsty barbarians who will slaughter their fellow men, even while the latter are recovering from the painful procedure of circumcision. But as all this is written in the Book of Genesis, one can’t fault the author for bringing these events vividly to light.

The lot of women in this time is to get married as soon as possible and have babies, and more babies, given the high rates of infant mortality, and to be subservient to their men at all times. The alternative is to become a midwife or a dancing girl, or a slave whose master may require sexual services, which could end up in the siring of more (second-class) children. There are multiple scenes of childbirth—a bit excessive I thought—good ones, bad ones and ugly ones. And the customs of the period are interesting too: human ashes in a mourner’s hair to honor the dead, a virgin’s first menstrual blood sprinkled on the earth as a libation for the crops, the mother naming her children, and bonded employees following their migratory masters.

Given the multiplying of Jacob’s family and Dinah’s extended family in Egypt, many of the names in this narrative remain that – just names. Some however, emerge as fully rounded characters: the beautiful and tempestuous Rachel, her son Joseph the dreamer, Jacob the wily patriarch, Leah the most fertile of Jake’s wives, the lecherous Laban, and Dinah the midwife - these characters lift themselves off the pages amidst a secondary cast of cardboard cut outs.

The severing of family ties that follows her husband's death is poignantly brought out as Dinah curses her Jewish family and moves to Egypt, pregnant with the only child she will have. Despite her return years later as an anonymous handmaid, she prefers to remain a myth, a story told around future gatherers inside the Red Tent. Her milk-brother Joseph too, now an Egyptian nobleman, remains estranged from Dinah. And as for those murderous brothers of hers, Simon and Levi, they fail to lift themselves from the page as fleshed out characters after being responsible for the pivotal event around which this novel revolves.

Not everyone is reconciled, raising this book above the “and all end’s happily ever after” type. Death to Dinah is a passing from one world to the next, a re-uniting with her dead mothers whom she loved dearly, and a continuing of the journey towards perfection, something that seems to have been lost in many of the Judeo-Christian religions, in which a virtuous life on earth is claimed as the single shot at gaining Paradise, whatever that is.

I feel like I must have missed something with this one because it just didn’t grab me; whereas my girlfriends have all given it four and five stars. I found it to be a bit of a slog and it took me way too long to finish. If it wasn’t for book club, I likely would have abandoned it and moved on to something else. A 2-star review posted here on goodreads argues: " Too much description of the unimportant things, not enough of the ones that affect the story." I couldn't agree more.

I felt Dinah’s first-person narrative voice to be long-winded and like any Biblical story worth its weight, over-occupied with who begat who. The first half of the book dedicated to Dinah’s four mothers and her plethora of brothers reads too much like a Bible story for me and I know that’s supposed to be the whole point, but I found the method off-putting. The excruciating details about the Red Tent and the trials and tribulations of women during this time should have been riveting, but instead, all the dense descriptive passages remained... well... excruciating.

Finally Dinah comes of age and the narrative picks up. I thought, at last! Now we’re getting somewhere. Unfortunately, the infamous events surrounding the tragic circumstances of Dinah's betrayal happen in the blink of an eye. It’s shocking, yes, but all too brief and rushed. It didn’t give me time to feel dread, empathy or real pain.

Dinah’s hateful brothers Simon and Levi are so very evil yet I never got a sense of the motivation behind their violent rampage. What fueled their rage and psychosis? I also didn’t buy Jacob’s descent into such a spiteful and degenerate character. Where did that come from? He began his life as such a warm and generous man, successful and honorable. Why did he transform into such a brute later in life? Following the slaughter in Shechem, the fate of Dinah’s mothers is described in a few pages of summary and I thought they deserved more than this.

I found the rest of Dinah’s story as it unfolds in Egypt anti-climatic. Even when her son is sent away to school and becomes a stranger to her doesn’t come across with any great emotion. The fact that Dinah finds her way back to midwifery is not surprising, and that she should find love late in her life is sweet, but the big shocking reveal of crossing paths with Joseph I found to be unsatisfying. That his story should have been filled with such betrayal, shame and violence – that he should have survived his family after being sold into slavery – this should have bonded he and Dinah together, but they remain estranged, and Joseph turns out to be extremely dislikable – shallow, conceited, power hungry. That disappointed me.

The only place in the novel that moved me was the death scene of Dinah’s best friend Meryt. As for the rest of the novel, I remained – like Dinah’s narrative voice – largely emotionless and detached.

I’m not rating this one. DNF at maybe 10%. Normally I would give that one star, but the weird thing is, I read it a very long time ago and whenever I see it in a bookstore, I think to myself, “Oh I LOVED that book!” I remember nothing about it, except that I was fascinated how the author took a short passage in the bible and created a whole world and story around it.

I found The Red Tent at my library book sale recently, so I decided to read it again. But this time around, I can't get into it at all, I find it boring and disgusting. Bummer, I should have left it as a memory.

Very enjoyable biblical tale.

Review to follow

Anita Diamant - image from her site

The Red Tent offers a female perspective on the biblical tales of Jacob, father to the twelve tribes of Israel, and his family, people with some serious issues, who would be right at home on HBO, with copious quantities of blood and betrayal to hold one’s interest. Dinah was the only daughter of Jacob. It is through her eyes and her retelling of others’ tales that we see the world of that time, the social organization within the family, how they related to other cultures, the roles of men and women. I found it moving to the point of tears as the end neared.

The Red Tent of the title was a room of their own, where women could commune without having the male sorts leaving their socks and Cheetos crumbs all over the place. Diamant takes liberties with the story as told in the bible, (a rapist in the bible is a love interest here) which no doubt freaks out biblical literalists.


Rebecca Ferguson and Iain Glen as Dinah and Jacob - from the Lifetime series

Midwifery is core to the women’s experience, pointing out, ironically and tragically, the existential threat posed by pregnancy. This dovetails well with the great need of the time to attend to cycles of nature to ensure survival. The women even find themselves menstrually in synch. No coincidence that the bloodiness of birth and monthly cycles takes place in a red-colored space.

Dinah’s secrecy about her own story in the novel reflects the omission of a female perspective from the tales and history we know from the bible. Her eventual ability to share her story realizes a dream of a more equal telling.

The Red Tent offers an interesting and informative tale with engaging characters, particularly appropriate for female readers of most ages, and enlightening for us guys as well.

The book was made into a soapy two-part miniseries on Lifetime.

=============================EXTRA STUFF

Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages

A 26-page preview from Picador

A pretty interesting article on how the book, which struggled at first, found its audience en route to becoming an international best-seller, sparking a reimagining of biblical tales - Jewish Telegraphic Agency – August 1, 2017 - How ‘The Red Tent’ invented a new kind of fiction by Erika Dreifus

Popsugar Challenge 2021 - A book with a family tree

'In the red tent the truth is known. In the red tent, where days pass like a gentle stream, as the gift of Innana courses through us, cleansing the body of last month's death, preparing the body to relieve the new months life, women give thanks- for repose and restoration, for the knowledge that life come from between our legs, and that life costs blood'.

I complain a lot that we are as a society don't talk about menstruation, female self pleasure and coming of age enough and here in this book we have it all.  I should never have let this book sit on my kindle as long as it did!

The Red Tent, the sanctuary where women celebrate and honour their monthly cycles for three nights every new moon. 

This is the fictional autobiography of Dinah, daughter of Jacob and Leah whose stories are found in the Book of Genesis.

In the first chapter of this book I really thought I was going to toss it out the window, so many names, so much going on and my confusion was overwhelming but I'm so glad I pushed though. Chapter two really pulled everything together for me and I found myself extremely invested in the story of these mighty mothers of Dinah.

I loved their battles but underlying sisterhood, their joyful rituals and traditions of their monthly cycles, their strength and determination.

I realise this is a fictional account however I learnt so much about his time period and I absolutely adored the chapters in Egypt, I could smell the fragrances from the pages.

Reading this has lead to many Google searches on Dinah and her family, I'm very interested to learn more.

What a great book. A book that celebrates women of that era, reminding us that our bodies are powerful, connecting us to the cycle of the moon and tides, at one with nature.  A refreshing read.

Five stars. Absolutely brilliant.

This book was so good that I don’t think I can properly rate it. It deserves more than five stars.

This was a retelling of a biblical tale, but this time, the story revolved around the women and their way of life. Unlike many other feminist texts, this one focuses more on what the women accomplished and not on what they weren’t allowed to accomplish.

When I started my reading process, it was just a matter of time before I fell in love with the characters and the setting. Everything was described with vivid detail, and the writing style was just what I was looking for. This definitely makes the list for the top 20 books I’ve ever read.