Book Review: The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

I made the mistake of waiting too long after I read the book to write this review, so my feelings are not entirely fresh in my mind, but I do remember I found the book very moving. I appreciated a woman’s tale during a period where we don’t have many of those.

Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent tells the story of Dinah, daughter of Jacob/Israel in the Bible. The biblical tale doesn’t dive into her story; she’s barely a footnote in the Bible, but Diamant spun the patriarchal tale into an almost matriarchal focus. The first half of the book focuses on Jacob’s four wives and Dinah’s childhood with four mothers, which was by far my favorite half. The second half follows Dinah away from Jacob’s family bubble as a midwife and widow, none of which is corroborated in the Bible and is entirely original to Diamant. Speaking of, though the story originated from the Bible, I wouldn’t necessarily call this a religiously Christian book, since the wives of Jacob were mostly pagan who respected their husband’s religion if they didn’t follow it.

I enjoyed how Diamant brought biblical characters—often bland and a tad confusing—to life. The four mothers Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah are the most deeply characterized in the novel, which is why I enjoyed the first half of the novel more. It delved into the menstrual rituals of the women, the sanctity of the red tent, and the horrors and beauty of childbirth, which were all fascinating to me. A girl’s first menstrual cycle was treated almost like a divine event among women, whereas now we just treat it as merely a painful nuisance. 

A lot of people don’t like Diamant’s treatment of men in the novel, but I didn’t feel like they were flat; they just weren’t the focus. The characterization of the men was actually fairly good despite them not being the focus, particularly Jacob. A lot of people also take issue with the fact that the “holy men” in the Bible are portrayed as flawed humans in the book, which I don’t understand, because if you read the Bible, the men that were God’s chosen ones were extremely, confoundingly flawed, from Abraham to Israel to Moses to David. I actually think fleshing out and humanizing the people in the novel gave a kinder perspective on some aspects of the story than if you purely read the biblical account. 

What I didn’t like was the insta-love that Dinah experienced with both of her husbands. I definitely thought that was the largest flaw of the book, but the book was mainly about the bond of women, so it was more easily forgiven. There were also times where Diamant made some mistakes in perspective, since our narrator Dinah occasionally strayed into omniscience and knew some things she couldn’t have. The book was far from perfect, but Diamant is a still a good storyteller, and it was a very touching story that I’m sure I’ll read again.