All's Well

When I attempt to sum up my understanding of this book, it feels a little something like this...


It was advertised as dark comedy. Was it dark? Yeah. Was there comedy involved? Yeah x2. Only I didn't find it entirely funny, and Awad's writing style was more painful to get through than quirky. I'm all for mixing it up, reading author's with a little extra quirk to their writing style, but this one missed the mark for me. So....see the gif above, because that's all I'm left with. Not for me.

“We all fall, Ms. Fitch. We fall and we rise. Bones and tissue heal. But sometimes we want to hold on to the pain. Sometimes we have our reasons for not being able to let go.”

“She is always there, always ready, always on time, like only the truly mediocre are.”

–from the author's interview in the back of the book–

“And that act of performing inherently causes you to second-guess yourself, which is so scary: the pain is a reality that you're living but because of the performance element of sharing it, your reality immediately becomes suspect.”

“I found there was a lot of pressure to be a good patient and to conform to some sort of progress narrative that my therapist or surgeon might have.”

I was looking for some new spooky books to launch the Halloween season. This didn't end up fitting the criteria, though it had some fun moments. I'm a former theater kid so a book about the theater is always a treat.

Horror should have some spookiness, tap into primal fears in some way. All's Well is more about vanity, self-involvement, and the general disappointment of reaching middle age and realizing your life didn't work out how you wanted. Nothing too exotic, nothing from beyond or beneath or even deep within. Certainly relatable though.

No matter how much we should feel for someone suffering chronic pain, Miranda's first person narration is tedious at the start. Clearly, Awad wants us to be annoyed with Miranda, mirroring her friends', ex's, and colleagues' experience in dealing with her. This setup takes up much of the first quarter of the book. I wasn't sure I would make it through.

When the supernatural element of the plot kicks in, All's Well starts to really cook. Her neurosis and paranoia (everyone is suspicious of her, thinking about her all the time, right?) ratchet up several notches. It's a real page-turner at this point as her theater production, the smiting of her enemies, and her love life all go her way. Her life improves at the expense of other people and yet she's experiencing a protracted nervous breakdown. All we need now is a surprising but inevitable conclusion, right?

Just when you're expecting this to build into something spectacular, some darkly humorous climax, all the conflicts are gently washed away. Awad decides to back off what was set up early on, which is a shame because it had some genuine tension and absurd moments that were almost funny in their extremity.

“But not too much pain, am I right? Not too much, never too much. If it was too much, you wouldn't know what to do with me, would you? Too much would make you uncomfortable. Bored. My crying would leave a bad taste. That would just be bad theater, wouldn't it? A bad show. You want a good show. They all do. A few pretty tears on my cheeks that you can brush away.”

This is my first Mona Awad book. I heard a lot of good things about Bunny, but because I got this free copy from NetGalley, I decided to start with this.

I love her writing style! I flew through the first half of the book. I enjoyed the dark thoughts of the main character, because who doesn't think ill at times? Buttt... she lost me when witchcraft/ dark magic got involved, just because I don't really enjoy reading about said topic.

I felt like the way she wrote about chronic pain
Is accurate and believable. It made me feel sympathy for Miranda especially when she hit her rock bottom because no one really believed her and nothing could make it better.

I didn't really enjoy the opening night. It just got a bit confusing to me. Weird and confusing and not in a good way. There were too many questions left unanswered, and I don't really like it when books do that. I'm here for answers, not more questions. Overall, an interesting read though.

I aboslutely LOVED this book!!! I read Mona Awad's debut, Bunny, in the beginning of last year and it was once of my favorite books of 2020. All's Well did not disappoint. I love the way the author can write a character going mad in such a sublte way that you don't realize it's happening until the character is off the deep end. I was a little weary going into it, because I'm not the biggest fan of Shakespeare but that wasn't an issue at all. I was sucked in from page 1 and I never wanted to put this book down. The atmosphere was so well done and I will be thinking about this book for a very long time.





Thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for providing me with an eBook copy to review.

Since reading this book last year, I have not been able to stop thinking about it. This review may contain spoilers:

All's Well explores the world of theatre and chronic pain, and follows Miranda Fitch, a former actress who, after taking a very painful fall while performing on stage, now has a job as a college theatre director. She suffers from chronic pain which has left her physically and emotionally drained. Her life is consumed by pain, and she fears that she will never be able to return to her career as an actress.

The novel explores the cutthroat nature of Miranda's profession as a college theatre director, where reputation and success are based on performance and attendance. Throughout the book, it is clear that Miranda's illness has impacted every part of her life, including the impact it has taken on her career. The book takes a deep look at that impact by letting us in on her personal struggles, including her abuse of pain killers, her messy relationship with her only friend, her past relationship with her ex-husband, as well as her tumultuous and negative feelings she has towards her students and coworkers, who are beginning to suspect that Miranda is just putting on a show.

One aspect that I really enjoyed in this book was the speculative aspect and how the author uses a magical element to portray the pain that Miranda is experiencing. These magical elements find their way throughout the book, and help convey a sense of dislocation and disconnect and show up as a result of her chronic pain. The author's use of language is also particularly striking, with such vivid and detailed description of the physical pain that the character is experiencing, it creates a sensory experience.

Overall, this is a powerful exploration of the intersection between pain and creativity and how the two can connect to each other in such painful ways. It is a beautifully written and deeply moving novel that offers a unique perspective that will resonate with anyone who has experienced similar challenges. It is sure to leave a lasting impression on readers. 5 stars for me.

i enjoyed this!! super atmospheric and surreal. loved the author's writing style, i definitely want to check out her other works after this. the shakespeare tie-ins were super interesting, but i did get a little lost in them, trying to figure out which book character was meant to represent which shakespeare character. it's worth saying that this is NOT a retelling (like i starting thinking it was), simple a book with some parallels to a few shakepeare plays.

All's Well by Mona Awad is a wonderfully bizarre, mysterious, magical, and horrifying novel from the author of Bunny exploring topics of chronic pain and theatre. Miranda is a theatre professor who lives with chronic pain in her leg and hip. Doctors and therapists either don't believe her or offer unhelpful advice. Her colleagues don't believe her, or have grown fatigued with caring. Her acting career derailed, now teaching in a small and underfunded theatre studies program, Miranda is fighting to direct her chosen play this semester, Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well...but everything changes when she meets three mysterious strangers. With frequent references to both All's Well and Macbeth, Awad weaves a story about pain, healing, temptation, magic, sacrifice, and mystery. Though at times esoteric, Awad presents both illusion and reality, reflecting the truth in artifice experienced in the theatre, as Miranda finds herself in a Shakespeare-esque “problem play” in her own life. This novel asks the reader to consider what they would do to heal themselves, and also perhaps to consider if happy endings are possible? As an actor and director I really enjoyed all the theatre references throughout the book. I also appreciated the hallucinatory vertigo Awad created for the reader as the novel progressed. In some ways I found this book less esoteric than Bunny, but still definitely in the same mind-bending style. I would recommend this book to fans of Shakespeare, fans of Bunny, and anyone who's interested in genre-defying speculative fiction about chronic pain.

Amusing enough, but not as good and fun, or funny, as ‘Bunny.' It's fine that the main character isn't very likeable. But the prose gets repetitive, a little too repetitive. A character has burnished hair one too many times. It's beyond fixation. I just feel like the story got away from Ms Awad a little bit this time. But I still enjoyed it.