All's Well

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re-read: i liked certain aspects more this time around but the repetition does sometimes feel OTP & that final sequence is a wee bit overlong…still, the author definitely captures how chronic pain in women is often dismissed or attributed to an ‘inherently female’ emotional imbalance…if you haven’t read this you should definitely add it to your TBR pile I'm mainly bummed because I expected to enjoy this a lot more than I did. It happens. All's well, I suppose. But at least my video, the one I’ve been waiting for—where Helen gives her soliloquy, the one where she says yes, the cosmos appears fixed but she can reverse it—is about to play. The main character Miranda is a college theater director. In her younger years, she was a performer on stage, but after an accident left her seeking help for her "invisible pain" the doctors doubted and thought she was a delusional pain pill popper she left the stage to teach it. I felt guilty for laughing at someone else's misfortune, but this was well-developed humor and insight into her mind and thought process. Some of it was disturbing and desperate, but most of the time I was laughing out loud. AWAD: I think for me, it’s pretty intuitive and organic. The materials that inspired me already had those components in them so it was easy to do. Because there is the very real setting of the school and the school theater in that production, then there’s also the very real setting of the physical therapist’s office. To kind of veer away once I’d introduced the world of Macbeth, that just felt like a very natural progression for this story.

AWAD: Oh definitely. You know, it’s an interesting question. I think the reason is because it’s part of the plays. I think that you can make an argument that there is a bit of a supernatural element to Helen. And I mean it’s certainly there in Macbeth. BOGAEV: Well, me too in reading it. And that is just so hard for women to pull off, being both the hero and the villain of the story. Historically, the Madonna and the whore. It’s a very complicated balancing act.

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I have had Bunny on my to-read list since it came out, and now that I’ve read this, I will be making sure to get around to it sooner rather than later. Awad has a unique, compelling voice and her writing feels both refreshing and haunting. The next time I’m in the mood for a fever dream of a book, I know exactly where to turn. And when I say fever dream, I really mean it. This is a weird book. You've been warned.

The book focuses on Miranda Fitch, an actor forced into teaching after falling off the stage left her with chronic pain. I worried at the start of the book that Miranda's suffering, both physical and emotional, would end up tedious because I wasn't seeing much of Awad's biting wit, which is what I'd enjoyed in Bunny. I should have trusted Awad, though, and while I'm not sure this book has quite the teeth that Bunny did, the wit is certainly there, and I think overall that I enjoyed All's Well more. From the critically acclaimed author of Bunny, a darkly funny novel about a theatre professor suffering chronic pain who, in the process of staging a troubled production of Shakespeare’s most maligned play, suddenly and miraculously recovers. AWAD: Oh no. It had to be All’s Well. First of all, I had the relationship with it. I had the really, really strong reaction to Helen that felt very special. I did bump my rating up from 3-stars to 3.5, based solely on the author's creativity and writing quality. The story for me is a solid 3-stars. It was a good story, but not necessarily my cup of tea.AWAD: I think there’s something to it. I think we do transfer pain in our everyday lives. You know, whenever we share something with someone, we are in a sense, you know, sharing our pain with them. And I’m interested in that. Ethically, what does that do to that person who internalizes the pain? I, sort of, wanted to literalize it. I wondered what would happen if you could really transfer the pain. This is a position that, according to Mark, I can supposedly go into for relief, self-care, a time out from life. I think of Mark. Mark of the dry needles. Mark of the scraping silver tools. His handsome bro-face. A wall of certainty framed by a crew cut, ever nodding at my various complaints as though they are all part of a grand upward journey that we are taking together, Mark and I. Miranda Fitch is a Theater Professor at a small New England college. Due to chronic pain stemming from the accident that ended her once promising acting career, Miranda isn't currently in a good spot emotionally. At last I hear her retreat. Soft footsteps pattering down the hall, away from my door. I breathe a sigh of relief.

BOGAEV: And just going whole hog. I mean, she literally goes to war. That’s pretty much how I read All’s Well, eventually. Once I got over all of the things we were talking about, I felt like, “Wait, maybe Shakespeare was taking everything to its most extreme. ” So with Miranda, I was interested in exploring living with this kind of condition, which is invisible to the outside eye. Nobody could see that I was in pain, but it affects so many aspects of everyday life and your relationships and vital aspects of your life, like your career, your romantic life, your friendships, everything." In Mona Awad's new novel, All's Well, the agony of physical pain meets the drama of the Shakespearean stage". The Globe and Mail. 2021-08-04 . Retrieved 2023-05-18. Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free, electronic ARC of this novel received in exchange for an honest review. Overall: the author’s different, interesting, extremely direct and realistic to the chronic illness was the best thing about this novel. I loved her choice to build the story at small New England liberal arts college like she did at her previous marvelous work “Bunny”.

Table of Contents

BOGAEV: Something far more interesting, which is how we usually understand the problem plays. I guess you could definitely say that about your book, too. Is that what you were aiming for? BOGAEV: Yes, and I did want to ask you—although now you have answered it—that it sounds like your interest in All’s Well came first: All’s Well and Macbeth. But you also have the setting of this story in an English department of a college. Awad was born on August 22, 1978, in Montreal, Quebec. Her father, an Egyptian Muslim, immigrated to Canada in the 1970s. Her mother is a French-Canadian Catholic of Serbian and Irish descent. Awad's parents met in Montreal. [6] I wanted to extend the world of the stage across the world of the book. That was really exciting to me because then that meant that anything was possible, you know? And in this story, a lot of impossible things happen. A lot of miracles occur and so I had to set the stage for that. And that’s how I did it, by just bringing in the supernatural. Mind-blowing. Equal parts brilliant and hilarious.” —Heather O’Neill, bestselling author of The Lonely Hearts Hotel and Lullabies for Little Criminals

Miranda did go a bit cray near the end but I guess that was understandable. But I also wish we had more clarity on what was real, what was imagined.

Book review

AWAD: Exactly. They’re so young and beautiful. They’re glowing. And so that, yeah, that was really interesting to me to see the other side and to see that power dynamic sort of switch. What I thought I understood, was not—It was more complicated than that. I definitely drew inspiration from that. The discussions on female pain and how able-bodied people, sometimes, perceive it were spot on. Also, the analysis on how disabled people are sometimes treated by able-bodied people was very realistic. Kelly, Hillary (2021-08-05). "Review: Wellness as metaphor: Mona Awad's new novel of pain and witchery". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved 2023-05-18. Well this was a rollercoaster. The desperation and exasperation of part one drew me in immediately. And the mania was deliciously delirious in part two. Much of part three and especially the ending lost me however. I’m keeping this at a 4 despite being pretty disappointed with the third act because the rest was so strong. The messages surrounding invisible pain/disabilities, how women’s pain is often dismissed, and how being conventionally attractive (and able-bodied) entirely changes how people respond to you are important and for the most part well-delivered. I just think the finale could have pushed the boundaries a bit further. This book had something to say and it just felt like the ending fizzled out and didn’t want to fully commit.