Her name is Dinah. In the Bible, her life is only hinted at in a brief and violent detour within the more familiar chapters of the Book of Genesis that are about her father, Jacob, and his dozen sons. Told in Dinah's voice, this novel reveals the traditions and turmoils of ancient womanhood--the world of the red tent. It begins with the story of her mothers--Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah--the four wives of Jacob. They love Dinah and give her gifts that sustain her through a hard-working youth, a calling to midwifery, and a new home in a foreign land. Dinah's story reaches out from a remarkable period of early history and creates an intimate connection with the past. Deeply affecting, "The Red Tent" combines rich storytelling with a valuable achievement in modern fiction: a new view of biblical women's society.
I got to page 50 and quit because I despised this book. One star is too good for it. 0 stars would be too good - because that's a neutral rating. It earned a place on my black-star bookshelf because it needs an actively negative rating.
I was interested in the premise. The idea of taking a closer at the lives of women in the Bible, of what they felt and experienced, was intriguing to me. But this book wasn't about that. It was about sex and blood and didn't say anythig interesting or insightful about either of those.
Also, you don't get to change Biblical characters or their motivations. I enjoy novelizations of Biblical characters - authors who delve into and expound on Biblical accounts, but without deviating from the story in the Bible. But she alters Biblical characters and the nature of Biblical stories and I'm not ok with that. If she balanced it with dynamic characters, I might give her a little leeway. But everything and everyone in this book is undeveloped and one dimensional.
