The Mother of All Things

by Alexis Landau

From the author of the WWII novel Those Who Are Saved (“sweeping and lyrical”– People), comes an electrifying page-turner about how female rage, grief, and creativity collide when a woman reconnects with her essential self during a family summer journey.

Kept busy by her life as a wife and mother, art history professor Ava Zaretsky has little time to devote to her research and writing. But while enduring the burden of solo parenting on her hus­band’s summer film shoot in Bulgaria, 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 Greco-Roman female rites of initiation, bringing her research to life and illuminating where it intersects with her own story. By exploring the eternal stages of woman-hood across time, 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.

Genres: Fiction, Feminism, Summer, Historical Fiction, Audiobook, Adult, Literary Fiction

336 pages, Hardcover

First published May 7, 2024

Reviews

[emma charlton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just boring! I could’ve stopped on any page, never picked it up again, and not cared. The cool stuff on the back of the book doesn’t start for over 200 pages.

[Courtney Townill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I typically love books exploring motherhood and female rage, but unfortunately this one didn’t work for me the way Nightbitch (a prime example of this type of novel) did.

Ava is an academic & mother, simmering with resentment over years of imbalanced caregiving. This comes to a boil when her husband is able to easily remove himself from their household for a 6 month film job in Bulgaria. When her and their children decide to follow him and spend the summer closer to him, Ava reconnects with an old professor and is reminded of feminism?

This novel would have been so much more powerful as a novella. Landau has a lot to say in this novel about invisible labor, modern motherhood, American motherhood, patriarchy, imbalance in parenting, etc, and all of this is told to us in long bouts of exposition that preached too much to my choir (and I think will preach too much to the target audience of this book, too. If you are reading this book as a woman/mother, the things enraging Ava will not feel new). It also elt like Ava’s story was barreling towards a conclusion with her husband and marriage and it fizzled out.

There is some gorgeous prose in here and meditations on the topics mentioned above, however it just gets bogged down over the course of the novel with the sheer amount of lecturing that happens in Ava’s story.

I received a free digital review copy from the publisher.

[Marleah (marleah_a) · Rating 4 out of 5]

"All she did every day was keep everyone in the family alive ... but taken individually, every detail appeared so small and insignificant that one could easily dismiss it."

Alexis Landau perfectly encapsulates the feelings of motherhood in her book, which sets a modern family drama against an ancient backdrop rooted in mythology. The main character, Ava, is thrust into handling all of family life while her husband travels to Bulgaria to film an action movie. When Ava is finally able to bring the kids during the summer, hoping to work on her own writing, she finds the reunion and her own ability to work lacking -- that is, until she is unexpectedly reunited with one of her college professors. Through this reunion, she uncovers a mix of rage and power that races along to a powerful conclusion.

As a mother myself, I found the character of Ava to be quite relatable and the secondary timeline interesting. I do feel that at times, Ava isn't entirely fair to the men in the book and makes assumptions about their thoughts and feelings, but it feels totally true to the character and her situation.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing this proof!

[Karah]

DNF at 50 percent. I really wanted to like this book but there was one major stumbling block that kept me from falling into it - while the whole premise has rested on Ava's resentment towards her husband about the unequal care burden she's shouldering, halfway through the book and she's never once told him how she feels. I'm all for talking about the unpaid and unrecognized care work that women do, but the lack of any form of healthy communication made it really hard for me to connect to any of it.

[Beth Pindilli · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am truly obsessed with this book! It reflected on a lot of the feelings I have about being a woman and existing within a deeply entrenched patriarchy, having children, raising children, anxiety, and aging. I loved both narratives and felt a connection to ancient womanhood and the goddess. "As women, we're tasked with the emotional labor and intuitive understanding of everyone's needs while subordinating our own desires over and over again."

[Vivian · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was so bad for a great many reasons. First and foremost, the main character, Ava, comes across as incredibly xenophobic. She views Bulgaria as a slum, and she is constantly worried that either she is going to be raped or her children are going to be attacked because everyone in Bulgaria (but especially Bulgarian men) is inherently shifty and violent. My second problem with this book is the approach it takes towards feminism. It's entirely over the top, and not in a good way. At one point Ava says something along the lines of, "When young boys are playing in the park on skateboards and making loud noises, it's because they want to commit violence towards women but can't do that so they are forced to make loud noises with their skateboards instead." Huh?? Ava's feminism is entirely self-serving, and I never felt sorry for her because she refuses to talk to her husband about her concerns with the division of parental labor in their family. My third problem with this book is Ava's former professor, Nikitas, whom she reconnects with in Bulgaria. Nikitas has been fired from her job for sexual misconduct, but the book takes the view that Nikitas has obviously been fired because of misogyny, since women aren't capable of sexually harassing/assaulting men. Again, wtf? From Ava's memories, it's apparent that Nikitas was verbally and emotionally abusive to her during her college years, as well as crossing into what I would consider sexual harassment. And yet, the book still hails Nikitas as a badass feminist hero! I could go on and on about my issues with this book, but I will leave it at that.

[Elizabeth McFarland · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had some mixed feelings about this book. It felt clunky and too long but I loved the feminist aspects. The exploration of motherhood and the mother/daughter relationship was profound. The feminist rage inherent to the characters' lives and the history of the goddess was a great foundation for the story. I just wish the ending had been stronger.

I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are my own.

[katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I ended up really enjoying this book ! Some parts were jam packed with detail which seemed unnecessary and kinda took me out of the story as a whole, but some parts it did seem necessary and it drew me back in ! The ending felt worth it, real or not, and I’m happy with how Ava decided to take control of her life ! A lot of the situations in this book felt extremely relevant and relatable which did help keep me going even when the book felt slow

[Fiction Lost and Found (Jackie) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book made me pull out some tabs for annotation purposes and that is really saying something. I absolutely loved the dual timeline as it jumped between modern day and 415 BC Greece. The feminine rage in this book is divine and so relatable. Such a great reminder to take time away from making our world and the world of others (spouses, children, coworkers) run to remember what makes us tick. Loved this!

Thanks to Pantheon for the free book.

[Kaitlynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Landau’s third novel is an expression of motherhood, female rage, and grief. Ava Zaretsky is a wife, mother of two adolescent children and an aspiring academic who specializes in Greco-Roman female history of rites of womanhood. In this novel, Ava, her two children and husband fly to Bulgaria where her husband is shooting a film. Throughout the novel Landau explores a failing marriage, an absent father, and the difficulties of raising a daughter who is entering puberty. Landau goes back and forth from present day to 415 BC analyzing the similarities mothers from all time periods endure. Overall, this book took me a little over a week to read and I related not only to Ava but also her daughter.

I would recommend this book to fans of feminist fiction, coming of age - midlife and for fans of ancient Greece & Rome. Landau explores century old questions such as: How do you balance being a mother and a wife without losing yourself? How do you raise a strong, independent daughter? How do you not fall into supporting your husband’s weaponized incompetence? Landau also explores how as women we sometimes make life harder for ourselves due to societal standards. There is a line that reads “Just because Kasper didn’t worry as much as she did, was that a reason to believe he’d let their children down?” and this line stuck with me throughout the book. This novel dove into questions and insecurities that women have had for centuries.

My reasoning for taking off one star is because at times the main character tends to fall into the learned helplessness trope and refuses to stand up for herself and her needs. Additionally, the resolution between Ava and her husband felt a little lackluster. Finally, there was a scene where reality and fantasy blurred within the last 50 pages, and it just fell flat for me.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading this book and thank you to Penguin Random House & Pantheon Books for providing me with this ARC!

[Alesandra Powell · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first, this book felt a little bland to me, but the more I read, the better it got. By the end, I was really invested in Ava, in her family, in her marriage, in her friends. I was really rooting for her. Lowkey disappointed that she didn’t divorce her mediocre-ass, rude, inconsiderate husband but maybe that’s just something I won’t understand

[Kaleigh · Rating 1 out of 5]

Cringe and extremely high school literature teacher coded no I will not elaborate.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this eARC.

The Mother of All Things follows mom Ava as the full brunt of raising a family falls solely on her while her husband spends all his time shooting a film in Bulgaria.

I feel like I want to call this book essentially Midsommar for literary moms, except that feels a little misleading in that the brunt of this book is about both contemporary and ancient women, their lives, and their internal struggles, and only a tiny bit of it involves doing a bad thing to a man. This book is slow, takes its time to get to all of its points, and is very decidedly not about the plot at all. Rather, this felt like a careful dissection of Ava, of the space she occupies, and of the spaces we all occupy as women. Though I cannot pretend to relate to a lot of the topics explored here -- most notably, I am not a mother -- I will say that this book was incredibly thought-provoking. Ava grapples with her own identity, with the disconnect between who she is, who she used to be, and who she might become, in ways that I think are worth talking about, because even if our journeys don't look like Ava's (especially the academia of it all) I think the difficulty of these kinds of changes -- and the inherent loneliness women often experience as a result of them -- are in many ways universal.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend this to everyone. I think you've really got to be one of those people who doesn't mind slogging through a lot of internality, who likes a slow-paced lit fic book, but readers who thrive on this kind of fare will find a lot here to love.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up.

A lyrical literary story about female rage and the challenges of balancing motherhood with a career. Great on audio and perfect for fans of books like Nightbitch. It took a bit for me to get fully invested in this story but I really liked the dual timeline structure and can definitely appreciate how some reviewers are critiquing the way Ava, the protagonist likes to rail against her lot as a stay at home mom yet never seems to have an actual conversation with her husband that might help resolve some of her frustrations.

[Connie]

#GoodreadsGiveaway

[Kristina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was intrigued by the concept of a story alternating between the timelines of a modern art history professor and an ancient Greek woman, but I found the execution underwhelming

[Hannah C · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/5 stars

[Lauryn · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are times when the disconnect between a book’s description and how that concept is executed ends up working really well for me as a reader… and then there are times when it just falls so far of the mark. Unfortunately, Alexis Landau’s recent novel, The Mother of All Things proved to be the latter. Looking to explore motherhood, femininity, and women’s roles in modern society with contrasts to those same elements in ancient Greece and Rome, the novel ultimately felt like it was trying too hard to tackle too many things and instead became a bit of a scattered mess. Too simplistic and preaching to the choir at many times, there were other moments when the attempts to connect to the ancient past felt incredibly forced and just didn’t fit as they tried too hard to be profound and instead interrupted what flow the main narrative managed to establish. The conclusion brought no satisfaction beyond being done – I don’t feel that any of the supposed growth of the characters stuck in a meaningful way or that any cohesive point was made.

When Ava’s husband, Kasper receives a huge career opportunity that takes him to Bulgaria for several months, she knows it means she’ll be on her own as far as their two children are concerned – in addition to her existing responsibilities teaching at the university and working on writing her book. Because she knew what she was getting into, she doesn’t feel like she can really complain but when summer vacation means traveling to Bulgaria to stay as a family near the production, Ava ends up reuniting with a former professor of hers and the frustrations she feels become more difficult to set aside. Finding and building a community of women helps Ava to confront some of the issues from her past as she struggles with how to raise her own daughter and how to approach writing her book.

For the rest of my review, please visit my blog: https://wp.me/pUEx4-1nw

[Kassie · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I read "the eternal stages of woman-hood" in the description, I promised myself I would put it down at the first mention of maiden-mother-crone. Alas, I did not. This novel attempted to follow in Nightbitch's and Motherthing's footsteps, addressing the strains and terrors of motherhood, but it doesn't quite make it for me.

This book simply wasn't for me. At the sentence level, Landau regularly produces beautiful prose, but I found myself thrown by the characters. Ava, the novel's protagonist, grows resentful and full of rage, but does not address these issues with her husband (who is Swedish, which Ava thought would make him more predisposed to an equal division of domestic labor). While I certainly resonate with female rage, Ava's desire to reclaim an overly romanticized vision of ancient women's power feels hollow and out of touch.

Though I don't suspect this was Landau's intent, the pseudo feminist language that pervades the "divine feminine" slides easily (and almost unavoidably) into gender essentialism. Ava's inability to conceptualize womanhood as separate from reproductive possibilties is, to be blunt, bad. Ava feels trapped in second-wave logic and her rage is quenched when, after the violent expression of her power, her husband "still wants" her.

[KayLove · Rating 5 out of 5]

Art history professor Ava Zaretsky has found herself with little time for herself. Being a mother has consumed her entirely, and her book sits collecting dust as she struggles to find any kind of balance. When Ava's husband relocates them to Bulgaria for the summer, Ava reconnects with old friends and has the opportunity for first-hand experience in something that allows her book to progress.

The feminist rage that just consumed my body as I read this truly was something else. The mother-daughter relationship dynamics hit close to home, having a daughter myself and wanting to be better than my mother before me. The need to protect my child from quite literally everything was perfectly represented by Ava.
And speaking of Ava, I think Landau did a wonderful job of making a "perfect" woman. Not necessarily in a "perfect by society standards" way, but more so as one of the most realistic and relatable depictions of a woman I've read in a while. I devoured this book; I love it entirely and promptly recommended it to everyone that I know who reads. The ending somehow left me both satisfied by knowing the characters were oddly exactly where they should be, and with approximately a million questions.

*projected release date: May 7th, 2024*
Huge thank you to Alexis Landau, NetGalley, and everyone at Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for the ARC!

[Vicky | readwithvicky · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highlighted the heck out of this book. It follows Ava’s relationship with her domesticity, her children, career, husband and current politics while also diving into the past: my favorite parts of this book were the chapters where we read from the POV of a possible ancestor from Athens in 415 BC. These chapters had me on the edge of my seat, if for nothing else, the rich history and traditions which I personally have rarely read about from an original/historical fiction POV. There was an AHA! moment 50% of the way through which immediately captured my attention and then I finished the rest of the book within the next couple of hours because I simply had to. Some of the themes explored are feminism, ancestral traumas and ties, feminine rage, and a focus on the goddesses of the past, specifically Demeter and Persephone (who doesn’t love that?) Beautifully written and do recommend! 4.5 ⭐️

[AndiReads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ava Zaretsky is a busy professor and mother of two. When her husband finally gets his big producing break and moves with the set to Bulgaria for 6 months the amount of work that hangs on her shoulders is incredible. The family follows him during summer break and Ava runs into an older professor mentor of hers from college. This moment gives her the opportunity to revisit what could have been. Following the professor will open a whole new world to her - does she dare? Feminist, angry and mysterious, there is a lot to love. There is also some animal abuse,
(small portion) and a bit too much woe-is -me. I did enjoy this book but I felt it could have been much much more. #knopfpantheonvintage&anchor #knopf

[Kathryn Estep · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nooo clue what all I just read. Definitely had sprinkles of potential but fell flat among all the complaining the whole book of Ava yet at the end her "argument" she "didn't hold back..." PFFFFT... as if that barely touches on female rage. She didn't step up to do anything the whole book & it feels like she was just letting life happen to her, what happened to main character energy?

[nat · Rating 2 out of 5]

idk, it’s a feminist book. it was good but some of it was just weird to read. but i did relate to the anger she felt towards her so. like men don’t do shit while we do everything, crazy.

[Olivia Fiorella · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5/5 ⭐️, rounding up to 2 because I read the last two thirds of it very quickly.

Unfortunately, this book was just not written for me. As someone who is not a mother and does not intend to have children, I just could not relate to the maternal anxiety that Ava was feeling for the entirety of the novel. Also, the whole time I just felt that I was screaming “DIVORCE HIM!!!” internally. (Mild spoiler, but, unfortunately, not surprising: they don’t get divorced).

My biggest problem with the novel, though, was this: Landau is clearly well versed in all things ancient Greek and whatnot, but there seemed to be a bad habit of showing AND telling. For the history aspects where she was explaining the stories behind the Greek gods and goddesses, it made sense because, frankly, I don’t know much about it so it was helpful to read that because it added to the exposition. However that habit of showing and telling bled into the actions of the characters a lot and felt like I was being spoon fed their feelings, not leaving much room for interpretation. For example, there was a lot of “she bit at her nails out do anxiety” or something along those lines (with better writing, but I digress). And it’s like she doesn’t trust the reader to gather that she’s biting her nails out of anxiety so she has to Tell you it’s out of anxiety. That happened a lot throughout the book which kinda grated on my nerves a bit.

An even bigger example of this that honestly caused me to roll my eyes a bit was when Isabel and Ava were creating Margot’s birth chart, and Isabel pointed out “You were her mother in a past life,” as if it wasn’t blatantly obvious that the chapters taking place in 415 BC were direct parallels to the events taking place in the book.

To hammer that home, the chapter immediately following the birth chart saga, had the mother in 415 BC and her confidant at the time (Xanthe) creating the ancient Athens’s daughter (Eirene) birth chart. Maybe I’m just an overachiever, but there were so many references to both the daughters’ striking beauty that they were wholly unaware of, slimy men who want them for their beauty, and an “untamed” rage and vitriol that clouded the mother/daughter relationship, that I felt Landau didn’t trust the audience to make that connection themselves.

With that being said, the only place where this wasn’t an issue was in the final scene (I guess this could be considered the climax) where the lines of what was real and what was a magic mushroom induced haze blurred, and the reader cannot be entirely sure if it happened or not.

And one final thing, it’s a bit annoying that I had to spend the first 157 pages getting what felt like an over extended exposition before we got anywhere.

[Annie · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book had such a promising premise, but in the end it fell flat for me.

It felt like I was having an art history and feminist theory textbook all rolled up with a mommy blog regurgitated at me.

I’m laughing at the synopsis that says it’s a page turner bc I have not had this hard of a time reading a book in a long time.

*spoilers after this point*


Obviously this is a book about a woman who is struggling with her identity as a wife and mother eclipsing that of her as an individual. I just felt like there wasn’t a single new perspective added on that front. It just felt like the typical, regurgitated complaints of every mother. There were pages upon pages of cataloging the mundane responsibilities of a mother and how thankless they are, without anything but stale takes.

It’s the fact that this book touts such strong feminist values. All of the above leads to resentment towards her husband, but Ava never actually resolves anything with Kasper. After harboring all of this resentment towards him, feeling like she’s ready to call time of death on their marriage, she just? Goes back to their normal life? HOW??? This man was never present, never had one redeeming quality in the entirety of the book, made sexual comments about his boss in front of his wife, and (predictably) didn’t trust Ava and followed her to see what she was doing. Not to mention, he lied to her. He told her he was getting a sitter because he was going to get a drink with a friend but he was following her with the guy who had just gotten fired for sexual misconduct and also presumably attempted a pass at his 13-year-old daughter. She routinely voices that she doesn’t even trust him with the most basic task of keeping the kids alive at the beach, and yet they just resolve all their marital problems between the end and the epilogue. Because “he sees her and still wants her” LOL WHAT? He violated her trust by lying to her and following her to snoop on what she was doing and invaded on ancient rituals that were supposed to be her secret. I get that that’s what’s supposed to bring them back together is that him being in on it bridges the space between them, but it just felt lazy.

In addition to the false feminism, it’s a shame to call this book historical fiction. There’s only clumsily done flashes to presumably Ava and Margot’s past life in Greece but it’s never fully tied in. The only common thread is they both participate in the rituals.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

My ultimate feeling is disappointment here. :/ I remember falling hard for Landau’s World War I historical novel, THE EMPIRE OF THE SENSES. The characters, relationship and surrounding world really popped for me. Here…not so much.

Here, we are following Ava, a weary mother and wife whose personal identity has been subsumed. In the summer of 2019 she and the kids follow her husband to Bulgaria, where he’s shooting a movie which sounds like every stereotype of adolescent male fantasy rolled into one (granted, we don’t spend much time delving into the movie. :P)

While there, Ava runs into her old feminist mentor from college, not that she needed a push to think about how she needs a room/voice/even community of her own. There is some history about how Nikitas screwed Ava over when she was going for her master’s degree, and maybe that would have been a more interesting story. Who knows.

Interstitial chapters depict Ava’s passion project of writing a novel narrated by the mother of a bride in 400s BCE Athens. (I was largely drawn to them because I wish I was so confident writing that amount of historical detail into my own “domestic history” novel.) Now, Professor Nikitas entices Ava and a couple of neighbors into a feminist circle where they reenact Greek rituals for worshipping Demeter and Persephone. In case you want to know the tone of female, generational legacy on display here. :/

My favorite part of the book was those snappy chapters going between past and present while groups of women went to the same Greek landmarks to experience something spiritual. Other than that, I was underwhelmed. As reading blogger, Lanie, wrote in her Reading, Writing and Me blog: Ava’s character is revealed more through “info dumps” than sustained narrative. Her 13-year-old daughter is mostly a plot device, a chain in the story of womanhood. The husband exists in his own self-absorbed bubble, but even the idea of him having a relationship with Ava feels distant. Instead, our protagonist mostly wanders around Sofia while being stuck in her own discombobulated thoughts.

“I am shocked that this book got published with so little written in scene, almost no dialogue, and a very chaotic construction,” Lanie writes. (Me too, girl.) “Almost everything that happens in the book is summarized, making it very hard to connect with the events or characters in the book. It steals all the urgency and the ability to get to know the characters more deeply.” This definitely isn’t what I remember from THE EMPIRE OF THE SENSES, but my reading tastes have changed over time.

These ruminations on female personhood, the rage and disempowerment, only work fleetingly. The end of the book (foreshadowed by a prologue at the beginning) feels more dramatic than poignant. Publisher’s Weekly calls it “not quite coherent” and suggests THE SECRET HISTORY by Donna Tartt for a better rendition. Maybe I should head there. Cos overall, despite my interest in the dichotomy between wife/mother vs personal identity, this book was largely a swing and a miss.

[Megan Okonsky]

Thank you to NetGalley and Pantheon for an ARC in exchange for a review. The Mother Of All Things is best served with wine, dolmas, and letting your husband watch the kids.

The story follows Ava as she takes on full domestic responsibilities while her husband Kaspar shoots a (very bizarre) action movie in Sofia, Bulgaria. The couple reunite after months apart, but it’s not a blissful reunion. The rage Ava feels is not just toward Kaspar, but a system that goes back centuries. (Passages from Ava’s manuscript, which follows a woman in Ancient Greece, offers parallels to Ava’s lack of freedom.) A surprise encounter with Ava’s former professor continues to stir the rage, grief, and frustration Ava feels toward the patriarchy, and the two join other women in secret rituals honoring the Great Goddess, womanhood and motherhood.

This was an interesting one. I enjoyed stepping into Sofia with the characters and exploring the Greek myths (which I’m pretty unfamiliar with). I loved learning about the theories surrounding the Great Goddess and the slight dips into magical realism. Plus, the writing doesn’t hold back. Ava explains, with vulnerability and honesty, the heartbreak and agony of being a mother in a patriarchal society. How women take on the physical pain and exhaustion of pregnancy and motherhood while still expected to maintain the home and pursue their own dreams. Ava’s own dreams of writing a book hit close to home, but since I’m not a mother, a lot of these meditations were just out of my reach. I felt close enough to the character to empathize with her but didn’t want to dive into the rage and frustration that she was going through. At points, it even made me not like the character. I wanted this character to *do* something, and the resolution didn’t leave me fully satisfied. I left this book feeling hesitant about motherhood, happy I’ll be co-parenting with a woman, and wondering if this author will write more about the Greek myths like this. I am curious to read more!

[Jenny Dunning · Rating 2 out of 5]

As so often happens, I wanted to like this book more than I did. I was drawn to it because I thought it might fit in well with the Women & Literature course I'm developing. And it would. Landau follows Ava--mother of 2, wife of a small-scale film director, and art historian writing a book on fertility goddess rituals (or something like that--what it actually ends up being is a fictional first-person narrative of an Athenian wife and mother in 415 BC)--as she struggles with (pretty traditional) gender roles in her marriage, lack of accomplishment in her own career, parenting, etc. The Athenian wife's struggles parallel Ava's, although she has few rights as a woman during that period. Guess that says something about how far feminism has brought us. Much of the book takes place in Bulgaria and Greece, which I found interesting. Ava joins of a group of women reenacting the Eleusinian mysteries (the story of Persephone and Demeter). Fascinating project. But in the end, I just didn't care enough about Ava and her problems. Maybe her experience is too close to my own.

The novel is not going to make the cut on my syllabus.

But reading this book has gotten me thinking about what makes for a really compelling character--in other words, why Ava wasn't one. I'm not done thinking about this, but I came up with a couple of things. Being a bit of an underdog is one. Ava is a woman of privilege with some problems, not an underdog (maybe I'm biased here because I really don't enjoy reading about characters like me). Another is, for lack of a better word, a degree of recalcitrance. I find the best characters are unable for some reason to fully articulate what's going on with them. This needs to be rooted in a character's character rather than being information withheld by the author. Again here, Ava falls short--she over-articulates, over explaining every resentment and touchy bit. Pretty tiresome.

Another novel where the project was stronger than the execution.

[M.L. Bennett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. There are so many layers to this novel, and I will not pretend to recognize them all. The protagonist, Ava, however, struggles with the wholly unattainable Good Wife, Mother, Woman identity that just truly doesn't exist but that's how she was raised to view herself. She also has a career as an art history professor and has difficulties delegating time between her work and children--all the while (she makes very clear) her husband comes and goes, oblivious to her needs as an individual, not just as a mother and wife. This disparity between parental responsibilities and gender roles is the crux of the novel.

I enjoyed this book. I found it very compelling, relatable, well-written and researched. It was rather bleak at times, as Ava described her marriage and husband's inability to recognize her rage boiling beneath the surface--well, it was just bleak any time Ava described any encounter with a man. But maybe that's what being a self-aware feminist means: the patriarchy is rather bleak for women, right?

So Ava describes all these issues with the patriarchy and of course there is no easy solution that this story line could have made without being completely unbelievable, but I am struggling to grasp the meaning of the novel's conclusion. Maybe I was rooting for her divorce and therefore liberation? I am not entirely sure what to think of the revelry in the woods and subsequent murder of a man--and this, I guess, helps her realize she still loves her husband and wants to make things work. Again, there was never going to be an easy solution to the conflict in this novel, but I was not expecting it to end the way it did.

Overall, this was a good read. Thank you to Pantheon and NetGalley for an arc of this novel.