I was a wee bit sad about this book by the end, mostly because the beginning was so rich and tightly woven. All of the details were consistent, all of the characters changed and grew believably, and the setting became safe and homey for me, the reader, as much as it was for Dinah and her mothers.

Then, it seemed, Diamant faltered a bit. She took me all the way through to Dinah’s near-wedding, and I was there with her, soaking in the story and the drama and the detail. After that, I was understandably confused by the vagueries – Dinah struggles beneath a deep depression, trauma nightmares, etc. It made sense that the narrative was less descriptive, disjointed, dischordant.

But after that, it was difficult for me to commit to Dinah’s story. The details remained vague, the characters seemed thrown in for the sake of having characters, and the book walked along to its conclusion without me. I felt like I was given plot points in a sort of outline that hadn’t been filled in completely. It made me wonder if Diamant’s true inspiration for the book was driven by the meticulous parallel with the biblical text, and once she departed from that text she was a little frightened by the pure freedom of borderless fiction.

To conclude, I’m glad I read this book, I DO think it’s worth consuming, but I drew the most intense enjoyment from the richness of the biblical text woven with a previously unvoiced experience.