All's Well

All’s Well by Mona Awad

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Mona Awad's writing gets me so excited as a reader. I am obsessed with Bunny and I loved All's Well too! I read it twice through, and I wrote
a long blog post with my thoughts and analysis.


You can do and read that if you want (obviously it contains lots of spoilers and quotes etc!), but here I will just stick a Mini Review!

I loved it, obviously.

- A twisty unreliable narrator that goes from sympathetic to the villain in her own story!
- The writing is clever, and viscerally describes the experience of chronic pain (clearly from the author's own experiences) and misogyny in a medical establishment run by men. I am obsessed with Mona Awad's writing, its so confident and her voice is so show more strong. She immediately has me.
- Delicious Shakespearean witchcraft, references and themes as the novel hangs between Macbeth and All’s Well That Ends Well.
- Atmospheric, visual and spooky, it gave me David Lynch (Twin Peaks) vibes.
- It does have an ambiguous ending that not all readers may love, but thematically I think its fitting.

If you did enjoy Bunny, then I think you’ll enjoy this one too! It’s narrative is more straightforward and it doesn’t have the guts and gore!



View all my reviews show less

This is like if a book was written like a movie, or a TV show. I have to admit I had a lot of fun reading it. The second half really picks up, the first half seems a bit drawn out, like they were trying to hit a word count or really drilling in the main characters pain. I felt it was unnecessarily drawn out. Also wasn't a HUGE fan of the writing style-- very clipped, lots of repetition. But overall I cannot deny this was entertaining. I laughed out loud a few times, the climax had me very focused, and I really had a drive to finish the book. But I don't think I'll read Bunny...

Mona Awad again negotiates the world of the body and its failures. Following 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl and Bunny, All's Well is set in a failing college drama department where Miranda tries to maintain her position as director of All's Well that Ends Well. So much against her: lackluster talent in the student acting pool who agitate for putting on MacBeth instead, few resources in the two-professor department, painkillers, a divorce, and -- most significantly -- incessant back and leg pain following an accident. Yet this isn't as depressing a story as it may seem.

The first page sucked me in as Miranda describes herself lying on the floor in excruciating pain which she describes with ascerbic wit amid a chaotic jumble of thoughts. show more The characterizations of the college acting student types, along with Miranda's take on all of them, are spot-on and hilarious. At the same time, Miranda's serious chronic pain is center stage -- in her own body and in the novel. She recalls the many doctors she has consulted and their various degrees of doubt and inept advice. No one, not even her colleague in the department, believes she is in the kind of pain she describes. Still she tries very hard to disguise the pain from her students, who conclude she is either crazy or high.

The students are another pain in her butt (ha!) as their planned coup gains energy. However, soon Miranda meets 3 mysterious strangers who give her the ability to lose her pain and forge on toward her goals. Hmmmm. When shall we meet again? Who would have thought to mash-up Shakespeare in such a way? Only Mona Awad.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley. This is an honest review.

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Miranda had been a stage actress until a fall put an abrupt end to her career and left her in constant pain. Now she is a director in a small college theatre department. Each year, the class enters a Shakespearian play competition and this year, Miranda has chosen All’s Well That Ends Well, an unpopular choice with her students. Unfortunately, between her unremitting pain and the increasing rebelliousness of the students, Miranda seems in a downward spiral - that is, until she meets three very strange men in a bar who seem to know everything about her and offer her the golden cure for her pain, a cure with rather shocking consequences.

All’s Well by Mona Awad is a beautifully written novel infused with empathy, dark humour and magic show more and it grabbed my attention from the very first page. Awad’s description of Miranda’s constant pain was vivd and realistic and her characterizations of the differing theatre types, despite being very funny, somehow managed to avoid cliches.

My only problem -I often felt at sea thinking I was missing important references that would have been more clear had I ever read the original play. But that’s on me and a problem I plan on rectifying in the future. Overall, though, I really enjoyed the book so a definite high recommendation from me.

Thanks to Netgalley and Penguin Random House Canada for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review show less

All's Well follows Miranda Fitch, once theater actress to theater teacher after an unfortunate event leaves her unable to preform and turns her life into a waking nightmare. She's trying to keep her life from falling completely apart while living with chronic pain that no one seems to believe is real, determined to put on a production that her students do not want to participate in.

The prose is well constructed, every word the right one, creating a darkly funny rollercoaster that will have you completely absorbed yet unsure what your opinion really is until the ending. All of the main characters have a beautiful depth to them creating a narrative that is all incredibly human. Miranda will tug at your heart and have you feeling her show more pain.

Mona Awad is a breath of fresh air with her uniquely structured narrative and bold unapologetic gumption to go where no author has gone before. Brilliant.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Simon& Schuster for providing me with an advanced copy for me to leave my honest opinions. show less

The point where this novel went from disappointing to fantastic for me was the scene in which Miranda descended the stairs of The Canny Man to find the Weird Brethren and it began resembling something like Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. The three men here play the part of the “gentleman with thistle-down hair” in Susanna Clarke’s incredible epic, and Miranda is in the role of Lady Pole. The world of Faery (or witchcraft) may restore life (or health) but it wants something in return - “a good show”, which will exact a horrific toll on its mortal beneficiary, who is summoned to the uncanny kingdom of the supernatural to provide the desired entertainment.

Before this point, something like 2/3 of the way through the novel, I was show more less than enthused with the grinding repetitions of things the reader has been told already, and then by Miranda’s wildly increasing mental instability once she sloughs off her pain. The Weird Brethren had been introduced but there was a long, long stretch without them. Then they blessedly reappeared and, dare I say it, all was well. For me, I mean… for Miranda, not so much!

So I do greatly wish the novel had gone JS&MN much sooner than it did. More of the Weird Brethren and less of physical therapists and boy toys would have done me nicely. In the end I’d probably give it a 3.5, rounding up to 4 because the final stretch was the good stuff. show less

holy fucking wow this book, did not expect to enjoy it so immensely

the opening pages were kinda fun, mostly misanthropic and a bit fatphobic, but then it slowly becomes this beautiful tale of pain, wanting, magical realism, fantasies, competition and... theater
all through the lenses of an unreliable, unlikeable narrator

loved it