All's Well

March 1, 2021

Her marriage over and her acting career totaled by a bad accident that brings on painkiller dependence, Miranda Fitch is now a college theater director eager to mount Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well. But her students want to do Macbeth. Following the multi-best-booked Bunny; with a 75,000-copy first printing.

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May 24, 2021
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. Agent: Bill Clegg, the Clegg Agency.

Starred review from July 1, 2021
Awad (Bunny, 2019) returns with a brilliant noir comedy about art and illness. Miranda Fitch is the dedicated director of an underfunded university theatre studies department. She's perpetually in pain, a debilitating but medically invisible pain that's led her into the nightmarish fog of daily handfuls of painkillers. But Miranda won't let her mysterious ailment or anything else stop her from putting on a legends-making performance of Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well--not a student actor-led coup, nor accusations of scandal, nor a distracting romance with the set designer. Miranda is assisted in her quest by three mysterious beneficiaries she meets at the local watering hole. As the story unfolds, Miranda becomes increasingly powerful and out of touch with reality, all culminating in one wild opening-night performance. Awad's characters are deliciously over the top and impossible to forget, as is the author's gift for morbid humor. The real magic of this novel lies in Awad's ability to draw the Shakespearean irony out of contemporary tragedy. Were he writing today, Shakespeare would surely have something to say about the opioid crisis, the pitiful state of the arts in higher education, and the chronic medical ignorance of female illness. Endlessly thought-provoking and not to be missed.

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August 1, 2021
A chronically ill theater professor upends her life when she stages Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well. After a freak accident, Miranda Fitch--who was a dazzling, up-and-coming stage actress--loses her acting career, her marriage, and her formerly pain-free life. Working at a university's "once flourishing, now decrepit Theater Studies program," Miranda is spiraling out of control. Her days pass in a flurry of pills, doctor appointments, and dissociative conversations; she struggles to manage her chronic pain and to make others believe the extent of her suffering: "On vague fire in various places, all over, all over. Burning too with humiliation and rage." Awad is particularly deft in describing the hellish nature of pain and the ways those living with chronic pain are often misled, dismissed, or derided. During a particularly tumultuous appointment with one of her doctors, Miranda says she knows what he thinks of her: "One of those patients. One of those sad cartoon brains who wants to live under a smudgy sky of her own making." For the student production, Miranda wants to stage the "problem play" that took everything from her: Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well. But her students--her lively, limber, and treacherous students--want to put on Macbeth, and it looks like they will get their way until Miranda meets three strange men in a bar. In exchange for "a good show," the men offer her what she's always wanted: no more pain. Once Miranda realizes how to transpose her pain to others, her luck begins to change--or does it? As her physical aching dissipates, almost everything else in her life becomes more vibrant. However, when no longer tethered to her pain, Miranda becomes unmoored from reality in increasingly dangerous and deranged ways. Imbued with magic and Shakespearean themes, the novel swings wildly between tragedy and comedy and reality and unreality. Although the novel sometimes struggles under the weight of its own surreality, Awad artfully and acutely explores suffering, artistry, and the limitations of empathy. A strange, dramatic novel where all's well, or not well, or perhaps both.

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