Beautiful Writing

Have you ever read a book so beautifully written that you felt the need to copy down and even memorize certain parts of it? That hasn't happened to me in a long time...until now. Recently a person I really respect asked me what I've been reading. I was ashamed to say that I've been reading only childcare manuals and bad novels (not really bad, just the kind easily digested by a sleep-deprived brain). That encouraged me to get to the library and find something thought-provoking and good. It was high time I get back on the literary horse, so to speak. So I picked up a novel that I've always wanted to get to, Anita Diamant's The Red Tent (Picador USA 1997).

The writing is absolutely poetic! It's the kind that forces you to move slowly, reading and re-reading sections that bring tears to your eyes. Here are a few quotations that I am compelled to copy because of how much they struck me at this time in my life as a new mother. Enjoy!

Dinah, the narrator, recalls being in the midst of childbirth:

"Why had no one told me that my body would become a battlefield, a sacrifice, a test? Why did I not know that birth is the pinnacle where women discover the courage to become mothers? But of course, there is no way to tell this or to hear it" (224).

"Just as there is no warning for childbirth, there is no preparation for the sight of a first child. I studied his face, fingers, the folds in his boneless little legs, the whorls of his ears, the tiny nipples on his chest. I held my breath as he signed, laughed when he yawned, wondered at his grasp on my thumb. I could not get my fill of looking. There should be a song for women to sing at this moment, or a prayer to recite. But perhaps there is none because there are no words strong enough to name that moment. Like every mother since the first mother, I was overcome and bereft, exalted and ravaged" (226).

I could not have described my experience of childbirth as clearly as these passages. Diamant gives voice to the feelings I had just after giving birth. There is nothing else to say; she has said it all.