All's Well
A Novel
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3.8 • 24 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
From the author of Bunny, which Margaret Atwood hails as “genius,” comes a “wild, and exhilarating” (Lauren Groff) novel about a theater professor who is convinced staging Shakespeare’s most maligned play will remedy all that ails her—but at what cost?
Miranda Fitch’s life is a waking nightmare. The accident that ended her burgeoning acting career left her with excruciating chronic back pain, a failed marriage, and a deepening dependence on painkillers. And now, she’s on the verge of losing her job as a college theater director. Determined to put on Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well, the play that promised and cost her everything, she faces a mutinous cast hellbent on staging Macbeth instead. Miranda sees her chance at redemption slip through her fingers.
That’s when she meets three strange benefactors who have an eerie knowledge of Miranda’s past and a tantalizing promise for her future: one where the show goes on, her rebellious students get what’s coming to them, and the invisible doubted pain that’s kept her from the spotlight is made known.
With prose Margaret Atwood has described as “no punches pulled, no hilarities dodged…genius,” Mona Awad has concocted her most potent, subversive novel yet. All’s Well is a “fabulous novel” (Mary Karr) about a woman at her breaking point and a formidable, piercingly funny indictment of our collective refusal to witness and believe female pain.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The pill-addled theater professor at the center of Awad's scathing if underwhelming latest (after Bunny) is nearing the end of her rope. Miranda Fitch passes her days in a self-medicated haze, numbing the debilitating pain she's felt since falling off the stage in a production of Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well. Worse still, no one seems to believe the severity of her condition. After the cast of her student production insists on putting on Macbeth rather than All's Well, Miranda is approached at a bar by three mysterious men who give her the ability to transfer her pain to others. In the first instance, she wrests a script from a mutinous student, who then clutches her wrist in pain where Miranda touched her. Eventually, Miranda's elation at escaping her pain gives way to a dangerously vindictive, manic spiral. Awad's novel is, like Miranda says about Shakespeare's All's Well, "neither a tragedy nor a comedy, something in between." Unfortunately, it falls short on both counts: Miranda's acerbic inner monologue reaches for humor but mostly misses, and the overwrought tone undermines the story's tragedy (when asked why she wanted to teach at the college: "I thought: Because my dreams have been killed. Because this is the beginning of my end"). It's an ambitious effort, but not one that pays off.
Customer Reviews
One of the best novels of the year
From the pain medication commercial at the start, All’s Well breezes through a surrealistic journey of a drama professor’s experience with chronic pain and those who doubt the pain. The novel forgoes any easy placement into a genre, but it borrows imagery and mood from horror, more than anything. The scenes in which the three men appear and Miranda’s golden touch occurs have a dark magical feel to them. Descriptions of Miranda’s romantic encounters with Hugo read like fever dream memories. The constant barrage of her close contacts insisting that it’s ‘in her head’ and she holds the power to make the pain go away--it’s very clear that no one understands what it is Miranda’s asking for or is willing to grant her it. Awad’s style can best be described as ‘stream of consciousness,’ but there’s absolutely a rhythm to her writing, more often than not making me laugh with Miranda’s thoughts running on impeccable comedic timing. Her prose waits for no one and I appreciate that.
I’m still assembling pieces together, but All’s Well is one of the most enjoyable reading experiences I’ve had this year, with exquisite writing and a protagonist asking for sincere empathy. The novel endeared itself to me from the beginning and I simply couldn't get enough of this very rich story. It’s easily one of my favorite books of the year.