This novel alternately exhilarated me and irritated me and where it irritated me, it irritated me in a good way, if you can imagine such a thing--over and over again I would be plunged into a seriously uncomfortable situation along with the protagonist Miranda, where I wanted more than anything to get out of that situation and move on to the next scene. My reading experience reflected the way Miranda tries to flee the pain in her body in an unusual and economical way. The scenes with Miranda meeting with her sadistic spine specialist for therapy are funny because they're true, not because they exaggerate how doctor treat female patients seeing them for pain relief.

The novel is strangely deadpan. I say "strangely" because most writers would allow far more interiority into their writing, to allow the protagonist to tell us how she really feels. We hear about Miranda's pain mostly when she tries and fails to explain her feelings to others. This is brilliant writing.

All's Well is a wild, confidently-told story that becomes magnificently weirder as you read toward its conclusion.. I enjoyed reading it.

All’s Well follows college professor Miranda as she is preparing to direct a performance of All’s Well that Ends Well. However it seems like everything is working against her, like a possible coup by students and chronic pain that no doctor can explain. When Miranda is offered a way to fix her miserable life, she must consider what steps she is willing to take to save herself and the play.

Wow this book was a trip. I can safely say that this book is one of the strangest I have ever read. And I loved that! The writing was gorgeous, but also excruciating to read at some points. I could truly feel the pain that Miranda was going through. At times this book almost felt like a movie. The scenes that it described were so vivid, it was as though I was watching them play out. It especially reminded me of Ari Aster’s films.

The plot was just as interesting. There was some time at the beginning where I felt as though it was moving a little slow, which is why I did not rate this book a full 5 stars, but once it picked up, I did not want to put it down. I delved into the madness with Miranda, which made my experience so memorable.

If all of Mona Awad’s novels are just as strange and amazing as this one, I can see her becoming a favorite author of mine. I will for sure be picking up her other books that are on my tbr. If you like this brand of weirdness, I recommend picking it up as soon as possible.

All's Well is a story about Miranda who is suffering from chronic pain. Her friends, family, students, coworkers, and medical professionals all stopped believing in her pain a long time ago, and just wish she would get over the "mental hurdle" of chronic pain. We meet her as she is fighting to put on the spring Shakespeare play much to the chagrin of everyone involved. Finally she is given the change to show everyone how much she's been hurting and that she's still in charge of her life. In Mona Awad's unique style we go on a twisting journey when the reader and Miranda both don't always know what's real.

I intended to pick up all future works of Awad, after reading Bunny a few months ago and this did not disappoint. I am not sure if Awad suffers from chronic pain herself, but the way she wrote about Miranda's struggles was so visceral. The unending struggle of felling like you're falling apart, only to have good days where no one believes you're still ill, leaving you in a constant state of anxiety of when the pain will be back. Reading Miranda's journey was reminiscent some Shakespearian character's and how the story was woven together was masterful as always.

Mona Awad writes weird books. Bunny was weird, and All’s Well is weird. Luckily, I love weird. I also love Shakespeare, so this book was an easy win for me.

Miranda Fitch is in pain. All the damn time. When her budding career as an actress was cut short due to an accident that derails her entire life, Miranda pivots to directing college theatre - which is a much, much less glamorous life than she'd ever imagined for herself. Add in her chronic pain, a failed marriage, and an increasingly alarming dependence on pain killers - and you've got a recipe for a Shakespearean worthy drama on your hands. The students mutiny, demanding to stage Macbeth - when Miranda meets three benefactors who seem to know a little too much about Miranda's life, and current state of affairs. Not only do they have insight into the past, but they seem to offer a glimpse into the future, too.

Mona Awad wastes no word, with sharp language, All's Well delivers a woman on the verge of becoming unhinged - in a cheeky, dark, and wonderful package.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for advance access to this book!

This was a weird book. It was weird in a good way, but also weird in a... weird way? I still enjoyed it though. There were many portions that were stream of consciousness of the main character, Miranda (reminded me of Catcher in the Rye), which is not my favorite style of writing, and so I would get confused by and/or bogged down by those sections. I really liked all the Shakespeare tie-ins - while the play being put on is All's Well, there are also a lot of allusions to Macbeth, and I also felt like there was some Richard III thrown in with Miranda's (and Briana's) physical "deformations". I could relate to Miranda's pain in the beginning as a sufferer of hidden pain, and I've received confusion/forgetfulness/"could you just be imagining it?!" responses from doctors and friends, so I could relate to Miranda's frustration in that sense. I also found her reactions to Briana really interesting as well, and what she learned about that by the end. I was incredibly confused by some of the scenes with the three men in the middle and at the end of the book, as I was confused at times as to what they were trying to say through metaphor. Overall, I'd recommend this book to any Shakespeare lover, as well as anyone who likes darker/satirical novels.

This book was extremely hard for me to review. There are so many unanswered questions and ambiguous aspects to the book that I think it is impossible to truly understand my feelings about it. I loved the representation of chronic illness/pain and I felt like it was done well. Like Miranda, I wanted to scream every time someone 'forgot' about her injury or belittled it. I felt all of her frustration which made it easy to understand why she would make a deal with the Strange Brothers when they offered to make her well. Of course she would take it. Of course she would do anything to escape this pain. Of course. But once Miranda began inflicting pain on others around her, I felt increasingly frustrated with the book itself. The book began to feel very repetitive and it also took Miranda waaaaay too long to realize what she had done. I understood as soon as she touched the student what had happened and I thought Miranda did too but then like 50 pages later, Miranda had a crisis when she realized what she had done and I was like??? yeah?? I thought we knew that already?? Repetitiveness aside, I had the same sense of wide-eyed desperation to read this book as I had with Bunny. I also liked the slow disintegration of everything that culminated in the dreamlike play sequence at the end. The writing lent itself perfectly for that kind of nightmare scene. And like Bunny I was left with a sense of confusion as I finished the book. I am sure there are tons of things that I didn't pick up on or understand in this book and I am looking forward to discovering those things upon a reread.

This felt like if Ari Aster directed Teen Witch. It was so bizarre in typical Mona Awad fashion. I liked it even more than Bunny and can’t wait to be able to discuss with more people once it comes out. Awad is so talented at what she does and I look forward to reading her next masterpiece.

Thank you so much, Mona Awad, for sending me such a beautiful signed arc. Seeing my name on the title page truly means the world to me. Especially since this book is now one of my favorite books of all time. Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an e-arc for this as well!

This novel was exactly what I needed during a difficult time in my life. Darkly hilarious, euphoric, and absolutely wild. Awad has a way of creating a solid foundation for her main characters with an arc similar to a cubic graph. The beginning was a solid build and setting, the peak was absolutely stunning and euphoric, and the ending was warped in gorgeous chaos. I highly, highly recommend this book for anyone who needs an escape from any sort of pain they're experiencing. Awad completely controlled my emotions and wow'ed me continuously. While Bunny is an all-time favorite, All's Well soared to the top of my list. If you're a fan of Shakespeare, academia settings, and dark magic, read this novel. I cannot recommend it enough.

Oh wow. I loved this book. It was so eerie and such a grand testament to the debilitative effects of living with chronic pain. Debilitating to well-being, physical and mental. Debilitating to relationship. Through Miranda's distraught story you really feel the pathos, desperation, and suffering of living inside a hurting human body. You feel the isolation, and the way no one can relate -- when they try, they seem horribly condescending. But, it's more likely that they will try to tell you it's all in your head. I think anyone who's suffered from mysterious, chronic, or unexplained illness will relate strongly to this story.

It's also about a cursed play, and the parts that take place on the stage are fantastical and capture the enchantments of theatre. There is lots of witchiness! Some people mentioned this reminded them of Otessa Moshfegh; I totally agree; I also saw comparisons to Chuck Pahlaniuk, who I don't read. The comparison that came up for me, especially during the long, dark, dream/memory/play/bar sequence at the end of the book, was the films of David Lynch. The writing is lyrical and exceptionally witty. Thank you very much; this will be a strong recommendation to anyone looking for good contemporary literary fiction, experimental fiction, and anyone interested in theatre, esp Shakespeare (which my library has a good-sized population of!).

I haven't read Bunny, but it was all I heard about for months and I've seen all the buzz about it on Bookstagram. I keep meaning to get it, and after reading All's Well, it has moved up to almost the top of my TBR list!

Miranda Fitch is the center of this novel, who we meet as a college theater director. In her younger years, however, 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. She is now a shell of her former self. She lives in chronic pain basically dragging herself through life. She decides to run the play All's Well That Ends Well which is very personal to her as it is the play that (she believes) cost her everything. The students are against this and want her fired. Miranda meets three strange men who seem to know her past and want to help her future (Macbeth is my favorite so I enjoyed this nod). Her pain starts to get better, her theater program receives a large donation and Miranda's luck really seems to be shifting.

I don't want to say too much more about outcomes or circumstances here for spoiler purposes, but I will say this- the writing is superb. This author's style reminds me a bit of Ottessa Moshfegh and also, Chuck Palahniuk. The descriptions are graphic, the characters are well developed, and the way Miranda is dismissed and unvalidated by men is infuriatingly relatable. I can't wait to pick up Bunny. This is the exact style of writing that I love!

Mona Awad has become a must read author for me. I laughed and cringed through the entire novel ( in the very best ways). There is a bit of the dirty/uncomfortable feeling that I get after reading Chuck Palinuek or watching the stage play of Heathers. So good.

There are unreliable narrators and there are irritating narrators. This narrator was the latter for two-thirds of the book. I never got behind miranda as a character, she was selfish, arrogant, and, delusional. Her inner monologue was too endless for me to understand anything real about her. The first third of the book was painfully repetitive- how many ways you can say something hurts??? It nearly made me stop reading.

Regardless, I recognize there is skill in much of the writing and hoppy storytelling, but this book wasn’t for me. I hope others can find something in it that I did not.

Thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A college theater professor is trying to direct a production of All's Well That Ends Well. Among her problems? Living with chronic debilitating pain after falling off the stage during her years as an actress, pining for her ex-husband after the breakup of their marriage, and the mutiny of her college student cast (they want to perform the Scottish Play instead of All's Well). An encounter with 3 mysterious men who know more about her condition than they should, changes her life as she tries to direct the production and navigates possible (magical?) health improvements. This book is captivating, a bit dark and engrossing.

Deliciously snarky, this book excoriates the culture of academia and expectations of women. The protagonist is a Shakespeare professor struggling with chronic pain and professional marginalization. One night at a bar, three quasi-magical men (reminiscent of the three witches in Macbeth), help the protagonist conquer her chronic pain and take control of her students. She goes on to direct a play of her choice, All’s Well.

This book made me laugh out loud. It made me think about the competing expectations about womanhood. A must read if you are interested in books set in academia and expectations of women and aging. I took off one star because the book went off the rails for me at the very end. Still, I’m so glad I read the book and would recommend it to others.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Mona Awad, author of Bunny, responder to my tweet, and all-around amazing writer, has proven her mettle once more with an astounding magical realism novel that will make you feel all the feelings on the spectrum of feelings if you have a soul featuring has-been actress, current perpetually unwell acting director at a small university Miranda Fitch.

Miranda Fitch was a beautiful actress giving generally well-received performances in the Shakespeare oeuvre, in the midst of the dramatic bloody hands scene in Macbeth when she accidentally fell off of the stage and damaged her back. Since that moment, her life has been a torment. She is in terrible, constant, debilitating pain, with few to no allies. The doctors she goes to cannot find a source for the pain, the physical therapists make it worse, and some of the people in her life seem to think she is making it up for attention or that she might feel better if she’d just adopt a more chipper attitude or that she has maybe crossed the line between sanity and madness. The fact that Miranda pops pills the way my toddler eats candy, and is so focused on her internal self that she sometimes misses people and events until she is no longer able to avoid them makes the reader unclear about exactly what is happening.

Miranda is pitiable – there is no other way to describe her. She is pitiable, and it is difficult to spend time with her, in her unending and unendurable existence of pain and unhappiness. One night, however, she happens upon three unusual men in a bar, and a web of magic begins to furl itself around Miranda and those around her. As Miranda’s life changes, she realizes that she is a caught in a web bigger than illness, bigger than love, and that lives and souls are at stake. Miranda is forced to confront herself, and to determine what is most important to her and how she wants to live her life… or what’s left of it.

This book took longer for me to become invested in than Bunny. It is, frankly, just very difficult to spend that much time reading about, and thereby empathizing with, someone else’s pain. Particularly when you’re not exactly certain if the pain is real, or if there is mental illness causing Miranda to feel a phantom of something that no longer exists. Awad’s writing, however, is always spectacular, her skillful craft thrumming through each line. And once Miranda does begin to think about other things, the pace of the novel picks up at a manic pace that will leave you marveling at the author’s skill and desperate to know what happens next.

Slated for release August 3, 2021. I highly recommend that you pre-order from an indie bookstore so you can get your hands on a copy ASAP.

I laughed so hard at this dark satirical novel. Mona Awad is just what I needed after so many serious books. The quirky humor she delivers held my attention throughout.
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 so she leaves 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.

The disrespect she receives from her friends, colleagues and students creates resentment towards everyone and especially the healthy mode of the younger actresses. She directs the Shakespeare drama All's Well that Ends Well much to the students' dismay that it becomes quite intense. This is wild!!

I'm so thankful I was able to read it and have heard her book Bunny is a delightful read also.
Thank you NetGalley and Simon & Shuster for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Miiranda Fitch is a disabled theater professor who just wants to put on Shakespeare's "All's Well That Ends Well". Unfortunately, her students protest and want to put on The Scottish Play instead. You know the one- the unlucky one whose name you can't utter in a theater. This book is a study on addiction, obsession and Miranda's decent into madness. Is it magic or is it madness? That's for the reader to decide. For Miranda Finch - all's well... eventually...maybe.

This book was fun. Was it the greatest book I've ever read? No. Was it witty? Yes. Was it a page-turner? Yes. Did it have a few twists? Absolutely. Would I recommend it to my friends? You betcha. I'd especially recommend it to my old thespian buddies. Theater kids/Theater geeks will love this book. I did.

Awad's writing is so enthralling. All's Well is an intense blend of genres and techniques that generates perfectly Lynchian disoriented fascination in its readers. Awad balances an unreliable narrator, surreal happenings and extreme intertextuality for a result that is irresistible, even for readers unfamiliar with the works referenced.

My relationship with Mona Awad is weird. I cannot stop myself reading her books, yet I also cannot wait to finish the book. I always end up spending more time on her books than I intend to. All’s Well is no different. Whole story is different than many I have been reading recently; however, I didn’t make my flip pages in awe and curiosity. I was repeating constantly “I’m sorry but what?” or “ Miranda should really take it easy on those opioids”.

I’m suffering from chronic pain too. I understand what it means to feel invalid and motionless when you were supposed to be jumping around as all others your age doing. I understand what kind of a limiting factor can be and what could one do to feel alive and well again. But just like in Bunny, this story crosses over to realm of weird.

Miranda was a talented actor once. She could have been more if it wasn’t for her accident that took everything away from her. Now at small college, she is directing Shakespeare’s plays but she doesn’t seem to care much about her students. It is almost like she is jealous of them. All Miranda wants is to be like Briana - young, talented, under spotlight as once she was. She wants to switch places with her even though she doesn’t want to admit it. But her wishes are heard by some witchy powers that turned this story into a drug fueled haze...

If you like Mona Awad’s previous works, you’ll like this one too.