Chris Dal Din Dal Din থেকে Marbaiguda, Odisha 765013, India
A woman with no voice learns how to have a powerful voice in this coming of age story.
Although this book was fairly well-written and there were some lovely literary passages, I didn't really like it. Except for Dinah's two husbands, the men in the book were portrayed as selfish, crude, ignorant pigs with no real purpose in life except to provide good sex and children. And there's a lot of sex. I also found the female characters' reliance on idolatry and fertility rites and goddesses at odds with the family religion of one God, and strange that the men and women seemed to have their own separate religious lives. The first section details Jacob's wives, which is meant to set up Dinah's life, but it was an odd construction where we spend 1/3 of the book reading and caring about them and then they disappear. The last couple chapters about forgiveness and peace are touching, but if I hadn't felt compelled to read it for a book challenge, I would stopped after the first couple chapters.