Page 59 - Phonebox Magazine September 2008

Book Review
By Oxfam Bookshop, Olney
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
Review by Sandra Metcalf
Candles on Bay Street by K C McKinnon
“My name means nothing to you. My memory is dust. This is not your fault, or mine. The chain connecting mother to daughter was broken and the word passed to the keeping of men... that is why I became a footnote, my story a brief detour between the well-known history of my father Jacob and
the celebrated chronicle of Joseph, my brother...”
Jacob's only surviving daughter Dinah leads her life amongst the women in the Red Tent – the women that Jacob married and on whom he fathered her 12 brothers, whose names, unlike Dinah's, have lived on through the centuries.
“Near the beginning of your holy book, there is a passage that seems to say I was raped... it’s a wonder that any mother ever called a daughter Dinah again.” From this brief mention of Dinah in the Book of Genesis, and a wealth of historical background, Diamant weaves a fictional re-telling of Jacob's wives – Leah, Rachel, Zilpah and Bilhah – and a picture of women's lives in the ancient middle east and in Egypt. Dinah’s tragedy is not what you expect from the opening of the novel; and neither is this a gloomy tale of
patriarchal tyranny. In a male-dominated society women do suffer, but they have their parallel strengths and their mysteries too, centred on the red tent of the title. After all, who knows more than women about birth, death, love, betrayal and forgiveness? This is a sometimes patchy but always mesmerising story, told in wonderfully evocative prose which can carry you effortlessly into this lost world. K
This is a gentle little novel, suitable for weary mothers settling sisters’, and it is he who experiences a
down for a quiet coffee after sending their offspring back to school at the beginning of a new term. It generates a warm glow, like the candles which are part of its theme.
Sam Thibodeau, the narrator, is essentially a small-town boy. He left his beloved Fort Kent, in the County of Maine, just long enough to gain his veterinary degree in Boston, and returned to set up his vet practice with his new wife, Lydia, whom he met at Boston’s School of Veterinary Medicine. Although the family home had been sold, he was able to find suitable premises for his practice, with a comfortable, two-bedroomed home upstairs.
Life seems good for Sam, until it is disrupted by the reappearance of Dee Dee, his childhood sweetheart. She has suddenly come back to the town, to live in her family home, minus Bobby Langford, her husband, but with a ten year old son. Strangely enough, the jealousy which Sam fears might cause friction between him and Lydia does not happen; instead, the two women become close friends, ‘soul-
passing shadow of that emotion.
Dee Dee, the flower child of his youth, has not changed; she has become an expert candle-maker, and in no time the women of Fort Kent, including Lydia, are attending her classes. Trooper, the lonely ten year old, attaches himself to Sam, helping him in the clinic, earning some pocket money by tidying up, and watching a skilful vet at work. But there is more to come, for Dee Dee has a secret which she is keeping from everyone she holds dear.
Review by Thelma Shackl
I enjoyed reading this book, watching the characters develop, and also the brief quotations about candles, taken from writers as diverse as Shakespeare and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, which headed every chapter. It is a good, heart-warming read. K
ady
Reviews brought to you by Oxfam Books & Music Stanley Court, Olney
Tel: 01234 714592
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The books reviewed above are from Oxfam Books and Music, Olney, which sells donated books, records, CDs, tapes and music to raise money for Oxfam’s work in combating poverty around the world.
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Phonebox Magazine 59