liked a lot on first read, but no impulse to go back and reread.

When I read this book in high school (college?) I felt that it was amazing- that it completely changed the way I thought about history, womanhood, and the Bible. To tell such a rich story from such a small part of the Bible really made me realize they could have been real people, and the stories in the Bible sound so strange because they're completely taken out of context.
I'm older and more cynical now, so I didn't find the story as powerful as when I was an adolescent. Perhaps I was expecting it and therefore on guard against it. I still found it a really great, insightful, interesting novel.

What a wonderful book this is. I kept putting off reading it as I didn't think I would like it but wish now that I had read it a long time ago. Do read this book - it is intense and great story-telling.

Blurb:
Her name is Dinah. In the Bible, her life is only hinted at in a brief and violent detour within the more familiar chapters about her father, Jacob, and his dozen sons in the Book of Genesis.
Told in Dinah's voice, this novel reveals the traditions and turmoil 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 are to 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, immediate connection.
Deeply affecting, The Red Tent combines rich story-telling and a valuable achievement of modern fiction: a new view of biblical women's society.

The red tent is the place where women gathered during their cycles of birthing, menses, and even illness. Like the conversations and mysteries held within this feminine tent, this piece of fiction offers an insider's look at the daily life of a biblical sorority of mothers, wives and daughters.

Although everyone else seemed to like this book, I found the writing geared more toward a very young audience even though the subject matter was not.

The is a beautifully written book. It cheapens the book to view it as women's fiction, or as religious fiction for that matter. The world created by Diamant is epic and vast and so fully realized that you can get lost in it.

SAID IT BETTER THAN I (paraphrased from a synopsis on ReadingGroupGuides.com):
THE RED TENT tells "the other side" of the Biblical story of Dinah, daughter of the patriarch Jacob and his wife, Leah. In Chapter 34 of the Book of Genesis, Dinah’s tale is a short, horrific detour in the familiar narrative of Jacob and Joseph. Anita Diamant imaginatively tells the story from the fresh perspective of its women. In the Biblical tale Dinah is given no voice; but here she is the sole narrator.

This is one of the rare books that I've read more than once. This was a beautiful retelling of a bible story and filling in what may have happened. The author did an amazing job!

Again, lyrical women's fiction, full of blood and sense and heady prose that will make you swoon. The characters though, brought alive from their Biblical hsitory. The relationship between the four wives of Jacob (who bore the twelve sons- you know the story, Lloyd Webber did the musical) who also happen to be sisters shows the closeness and nessecity of family and friendship between women at that and all times. The story then tells of Dinah, Jacob's only daughter, and her plight in Egypt.

I'm not going to be a massive spoiler, but by the end of the book I was weeping and if I ever feel in the need of a good cry this is the book I turn to (when I find my own copy of it!)

A tale in biblical times from the perspective of a minor biblical character as well as a woman. It is a fascinating take on well known stories and characters from the perspective of a woman. Love the way the story can really makes biblical era come alive for me. Def would recommend reading.

This book tells the story of Dinah, Jacob's only daughter in the bible. It gives her story beginning to end, and the story of her mothers. I liked the characters in this book, I also was drawn this book because it explains a biblical story from the point of view of the women in the story, which makes the familiar (to me at least) seem different or in a new light.

3-10