A daring novel from the acclaimed author of Those Who Are Saved: female rage, grief, and creativity collide in the present and animate the past, when a woman reconnects with her essential self during a summer journey, and discovers an ancient female world that offers parallels to her ownKept busy by her obligations as a wife and mother, art history professor Ava Zaretsky has little time to devote to her research and writing. Now tagging along on her film-producer husband’s shoot in Bulgaria for the summer, where she’s mostly solo parenting her sweet son and rebellious budding tween daughter, she has a chance encounter with her fierce feminist mentor from college, which changes everything.
Ava is swept up into a circle of women who reenact ancient Greco-Roman mystery rites of initiation, bringing her research to life and illuminating the story of a 5th-century-BC mother-daughter pair whose sense of female loyalty to each other and connection to the divine feminine guides Ava in her exploration of the eternal stages of womanhood. Reaching across time and deep into the female psyche,
The Mother of All Things delivers a revelatory tale of a woman coming to terms with her evolving sense of responsibility to herself and her family, as she achieves a new appreciation of the gifts of female wisdom and self-belief.
"From the author of the WWII novel Those Who Are Saved ("sweeping and lyrical"-People), comes an electrifying page-turner about female rage, grief, and creativity, as a contemporary mother immerses herself in ancient Greco-Roman female mystery rites while on a summer journey with her family. Ava, an adjunct art-history professor whose research and writing have been stymied by her life as a wife and mother in LA, joins her Hollywood film producer husband on a summer shoot in Bulgaria. During the demanding production schedule, Ava is mostly solo-parenting their young son and 13-year-old daughter, who is on the cusp of rebellion and sexual knowledge. In a chance encounter in Sofia, Ava reconnects with her fierce feminist mentor from college and is drawn into a circle of women who are reenacting Greco-Roman female rites of initiation based on the Eleusinian Mysteries. Ava's own research into those rites comes to life through Astra, a parallel mother in 5th-century BC Athens, whose story counterpoints and dovetails with Ava's, as Landau explores the eternal stages of womanhood across time. In The Mother of All Things, she delivers a sharply contemporary, relatable yet at times surreal tale of a wife and mother coming to terms with her evolving sense of responsibility to her children and husband, to her creative life, and to herself"--
