From the Bookshelf of Tournament of Books…

All's Well

Mona Awad

Start date: March 9, 2022

Finish date: April 1, 2022

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What Members Thought

Sep 23, 2021 jo rated it it was amazing

Shelves: blew-my-mind, disability, audio, canada

like All's Well protagonist miranda (whose name i read as an homage to Margaret Atwood and her similarly theater-centered novel Hag-Seed), i suffer from a gravely debilitating chronic illness. unlike the protagonist, my pain is not too bad and i easily control it with sweet CBD (other problems are not so easily addressed and resolved, alas). but of course the similarities are many, most noticeably: how we become the people no one wants to be with; how we internalize this sense of burden and beco like All's Well protagonist miranda (whose name i read as an homage to Margaret Atwood and her similarly theater-centered novel Hag-Seed), i suffer from a gravely debilitating chronic illness. unlike the protagonist, my pain is not too bad and i easily control it with sweet CBD (other problems are not so easily addressed and resolved, alas). but of course the similarities are many, most noticeably: how we become the people no one wants to be with; how we internalize this sense of burden and become "difficult" (or do we?); how we get dismissed and belittled by doctors with startling regularity; how we lie on floors and cry.

whether miranda is indeed difficult is a central theme of the novel, maybe its central theme. she is not a sympathetic character, i think because we see her through a lens that is the product of the combination of how others see her and how she sees herself (when you are so very sick you tend indeed not to look or act your best). awad, who suffered for a while from the same chronic pain as miranda, gives us this "being difficult," this being alienating in all its tawdry glory. you become difficult because you cannot but be so. you cannot take time off because then you lose your insurance. you require accommodations others perceive as asking for too much. and no, you cannot meet anyone half way, cuz their half way is a place you simply cannot reach. people become angry and annoyed and irritable around you. you become angry and annoyed and irritable back. suckingness ensues.

awad doesn't make us pity miranda, or empathize with her, for the most part. in fact, we (i?) tend to sympathize with the others, those who are impatient at her refusal to get better on command, those who have to deal with her strangeness.

then the play happens. the book moves into hallucinatory territory, partly i think as a manifestation of miranda's own wishful thinking, partly as a result of her exhilaration (oh the magic of oxytocin!), partly because shakespeare plays have magic in them so why not bring magic into the novel?

from this point on all interpretation becomes treacherous, and i am not sure i can say what is what. what i can say is that new, magically healed miranda is not a bit more sympathetic than ill miranda. she is euphoric, manic (oh, thank you thank YOU oxytocin), unstoppable. she can be mean and inconsiderate. she still alienates people.

near the end, in a tour-de-force set piece, she has three intensely hallucinatory nightmares that i believe are meant to symbolize the tolls of chronic illness: the sense that we are killing those we love; the terrors of medical intervention that does not take us and our wishes into account (the straps are reminiscent of psychiatric incarceration, and how many of us chronic sufferers are indeed considered some kind of "mentally ill?"); the loss of motherhood.

the doctors, alleged saviors with the name of the evangelists, are men. the husband who leaves miranda because her illness becomes too burdensome to bear is a man. those who stand by miranda are women who do the best they can, with more or less grace (miranda's best friend and colleague is called grace), with more or less capacity to bring healing. there is so much this novel indicts: the medical establishment, the patriarchy, our society's unwillingness to make room for the disabled, corrupt higher ed, the carceral system. there's a lot it celebrates: the resilience of unpleasant women, the bond of women, the tenderness of women for each other, gentle men, and, above all, the heady power of art and performance. ...more

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Apr 23, 2022 Nadine in NY Jones rated it it was ok

Shelves: audio, t-o-b, is-it-real-or-is-it-memorex, fiction, literary-schmiterary

I enjoyed the dark humor, at first, but I wished this wasn't quite so wordy. Nothing happens in this book. It is 350 pages of mood and suggestion and memory, and a few pages of action. I was not engaged, I did not care about any of the characters. I kept hoping for something to happen. There are A LOT of internal thoughts, and - as internal thoughts are wont to do - they spiral around each other over and over, repeating the same thought. I wished I could just cut out all of that and get on I enjoyed the dark humor, at first, but I wished this wasn't quite so wordy. Nothing happens in this book. It is 350 pages of mood and suggestion and memory, and a few pages of action. I was not engaged, I did not care about any of the characters. I kept hoping for something to happen. There are A LOT of internal thoughts, and - as internal thoughts are wont to do - they spiral around each other over and over, repeating the same thought. I wished I could just cut out all of that and get on with things.

The protagonist is one of those annoying people who just will not shut up, refuses to get to the point, insists on nattering on and on. I couldn’t take it. I detested her. I tuned her out. I fell asleep (several times). I REALLY hated her by the end, and I wanted to see something really awful happen. The only thing that kept me reading was the hope for a massively downward spiral.

I want to tell her, Ellie, I hope you know the only reason I don’t cast you in lead roles is because of bitch Briana’s parents. How I wish I could have cast you as Juliet last season. You would have been so perfect with your melancholy fire and your cheeks that burn bright at the sight of Trevor, our Romeo. You would have been in close proximity to Trevor for three months. Three afternoons a week, you would have felt his teenage breath on your face. You would have breathed in his boyish musk. You would have looked up into his empty, beautiful eyes. His dumb, deep voice would have been at your ear, his lips close to your unpierced fuzzy lobe, making all the dark hairs on your pale body stand on end. He would have crushed your cold hands in his sweaty warm ones. He would have given you things to masturbate about for months, perhaps years; you would revisit this material in the dark, after a day of tending to a cruel and ailing mother who fails to see your gifts. How I would love to have given you this experience, as your drama teacher, as a kind of other mother. Rather than see you off to the side, in old woman’s makeup and dowdy servant’s clothes, playing the nurse. Giving Briana/Juliet pep talks backstage. Watching Briana and Trevor from the wings, smoldering with envy, grief. Ah, but it deepened your soul. It gave you pain. Pain is a great actor’s gift, Ellie. It is a burden but it is a gift too. To be mined. If one is in control of one’s pain, of course.

The bold is my emphasis for the only part that I really needed to read. The rest is just chaff. The entire book is so much chaff. 80% chaff.

I know Mark the PT is meant to be a “bad guy” of sorts, but he really speaks for me when he tells Miranda: “Okay, that’s enough ... Got it. Got the gist.”

It just gets worse, too. Later, there’s a half page of just the word “away.” Why? Why am I subjected to this? Am I supposed to hate Miranda? Because I hated Miranda.

I know, it's a style, but I found it so tedious, I just kept increasing the audio speed faster and faster, just to get through all this rambling. In a way, the sped up audio enhanced Miranda's apparent insanity.

word count:
"am I right?" - 65 ...more

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Mar 13, 2022 C rated it really liked it

Shelves: favorite, tournament-of-books

First, PERFECTTTT cover for this book. The cover deftly combines the two halves of this book: chronic pain and theater. Some might complain that the complaints about pain are TOO much. But I think this is because when you have chronic pain, it takes over your life. It becomes more important than anything else, all the time. This wasn't a problem in the book for me. But with an unreliable narrator, I'm kind of left in a whirlwind of "what the heck just happened?" I'm not sure what happened to Mir ...more

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Jan 02, 2022 Jessica (thebluestocking) rated it really liked it

Shelves: rooster-2022

I wasn’t sure what to expect with this book. It did get weird. No doubt. But I really enjoyed the writing and the twists and turns. The descriptions of chronic pain and useless treatments were particularly visceral. And it made me want to read Shakespeare. A win for me.

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Mar 14, 2022 Peggy rated it really liked it

Shelves: tob-reads

This wild ride of a book asks a tantalizing question: if you suffered chronic, excruciating pain daily, and had the chance to be rid of it by shifting it onto others, would you? Especially if those others had wronged you in some way? Would you?

This book has A LOT going on. It focuses tightly on Miranda Fitch, theater director at a small college and chronic pain sufferer after falling off a stage during a performance of Macbeth. She's trying to stage Shakespeare's "problem play" All's Well That E This wild ride of a book asks a tantalizing question: if you suffered chronic, excruciating pain daily, and had the chance to be rid of it by shifting it onto others, would you? Especially if those others had wronged you in some way? Would you?

This book has A LOT going on. It focuses tightly on Miranda Fitch, theater director at a small college and chronic pain sufferer after falling off a stage during a performance of Macbeth. She's trying to stage Shakespeare's "problem play" All's Well That Ends Well while encountering no end of problems herself: her students revolt, her pain puts her in a constant drug-induced stupor, and no one believes her or really seems to like her anymore. Some of the observations about college life are quite spot-on: the way teachers can sometimes see their students as adversaries; the way students struggle to see their teachers as actual human beings; the petty rivalries that rise up within departments--yikes. As a professor, I loved those moments a lot.

But the book really becomes a searing indictment of how we treat those with chronic pain in our society. It's especially an indictment of how women in particular are treated, specifically by male doctors who are often condescending, disbelieving, and downright torturous. We are fine with women suffering in our society as long as it's done in a quietly beautiful way, this book suggests, and there is nothing quiet or beautiful about Miranda's suffering. Awad puts us in her body so strongly that we have no choice but to be horrified by her pain and her lack of options--her leg is a concrete slab she drags around, fire shoots down her back and through her hip. The way this book captures her suffering but also captures the truth of how trying it can be to be in the orbit of those sufferers, well, it's uncomfortable. She knows she's terrible to be around yet she's in such pain there's nothing else to do.

So when she makes a dark bargain with three "weird" men and is released from her painful prison, well, she goes a little (a lot?) crazy. She's lightness, she's leaping and dancing, she's having great sex. But at what cost? The final third of the book is a manic fever dream and it's tough to discern what's real and what's invented by Miranda. The final confrontation for me was unsatisfying and I'm still not sure the ending really delivered anything. (What is up with Ellie??? What are we to make of her "magical" herb baths?)

But the journey getting there is pretty remarkable and the themes worth exploring. A world that doesn't take women's pain seriously is a crappy world indeed, and Miranda exemplifies that. ...more

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Nov 26, 2021 Jennifer rated it really liked it

Shelves: netgalley, tob2022longlist, tob2022

I enjoyed Bunny and love a deeply odd and strange book. All's Well is like that. Plus Shakespeare! I love a campus novel, and dark academic (in this, dark theatre academia?) works for me as a former grad student. Though the narrator is careful to point out she's no academic. Her literal fall from glory as an actress brought her into a world of pain. But with some mystical twists somehow... all's well for her. Though maybe not for the people around her...

I liked the twists and turns, so won't rev ...more

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