Here is what the inside cover says about THE MOTHER OF ALL THINGS (2024) by Alexis Landau: a daring novel [about] female rage, grief, 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 world that offers parallels to her own. The novel cover features Venus Callipygian from Romes first century. I love that period, wretched and violent as it was. And bring on the novels abut female rage. Not sure what that says about this reader, but: fact. Ava Zaretsky is in Bulgaria with her two children because her husband is producing a film there. He is never home. She has the kids all day, and she has no time for her own research and writing. She meets up with a group of women who reenact ancient Greco-Roman mystery rites, which connects with her own languishing research. Ava gets an up-close look at herself and the bondage she feels as a woman responsible for domestic life when her yearning for...