This literary fiction novel follows Miranda Fitch as she struggles to find a way to manage her debilitating chronic pain. After her career as an actor ended, Miranda is now the theater director of a small college. Miranda wants to put on Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well but the student cast would rather do Macbeth. All's Well was the last play Miranda acted in before her accident and when the chance to redeem herself starts to slip through her grasp, she begins to spiral. Thankfully, she meets three strange men in a bar one night and they tell her that she'll get to put on her play as well as have the truth of her pain shown to those who doubt her. As we get closer to opening night, Miranda's life gets increasingly strange and unseen consequences take center stage.
So my feelings about this book can be summed up by: I think the book did a good job at what it was trying to do, but what it was trying to do was not for me. I liked this book alright while I was reading it, but I wish it had a stronger ending. Based on the synopsis for the book, I was expecting this to be a more externally focused story - basically Miranda versus the world - and for it to have a sort of horror/thriller vibe with the "mutinous cast hellbent on staging Macbeth instead". The story ended up being much much more focused internally on Miranda and her struggles and desires. There are still external sources of tension (doctors who don't believe her, her students, etc) but the majority of the narrative focused on how those external sources made Miranda feel and her reactions to some of these external situations. And while there are some strange magical elements to the story, they paled in comparison to the dissection of Miranda's psyche on the page. I think I misunderstood parts of the book synopsis and put my own expectations on the book to be something that it isn't. This was a really great lit-fic examination of the human experience and how lives can be changed in an instant but that type of story just isn't my jam.
I think the most stand-out element by far is the writing. It is incredibly immersive and entrancing but I didn't find it overly flowery. I usually find the prose in lit-fic stories to be self indulgent and almost feel like the author is showing off. I think Awad toes this line well and a good part of that is because a lot of the things she is describing in this poetic language are pretty terrible things like chronic pain and feelings of rejection and self-destruction. The narrative structure really helps emphasize Miranda's emotional state and when she is spiraling we will get these large chunks of text of description. Since this is an ARC, there is a chance the book formatting will change but these large blocks of text felt very intentional so don't think they will be changed in the final copy. I did have a hard time not skipping or skimming these large blocks but that is a personal issue more so than a problem with the narration. I had to force myself to slow down and make sure to not skip over these chunks so I could appreciate the story.
My main issue with the book was the ending. It just didn't really give me any real sense of closure or that the story was wrapped up in a satisfactory way. The best way I can explain without spoiling anything would be that the book ends with a sort of dread where we (and Miranda) know what will happen soon but it is left a bit ambiguous when exactly that event will happen. My issue is that this future event is tied pretty closely to the main story arc so instead of the ending being a bit mysterious or being a little open-ended (which is what I felt like it was going for) it ends up just feeling sort of unfinished. It felt like we were missing about 30 pages where we see the aftermath of the main plot and then this future event. We spent this whole book getting all this build up and this ramping up of the tension and stakes and the climax of the story raised those stakes even more and I wanted to see the full downfall on the other side of the climax.
I usually would say I'm a more of a character-driven reader but this was pushing it even for me. It is told in first person and we are the furthest inside any character's head that I've ever read. Almost uncomfortably inside at times. I think this is used to the greatest success in the chronic pain parts of the story. The story literally starts with Miranda on the floor in her office while trying to get well enough so she can go teach her class. We see her at her lowest and really jump into the deep end with her character and the reader can really empathize with her pain and how it affects her life. But we also get Miranda's inner monologue when it comes to the people and situations around her and I would categorize her as an unlikable protagonist. There's an interesting back and forth where we start to feel bad for her and her struggles but then she can be a real bitch to the people around her so then we don't feel as sorry. Obviously, people are complex and are never all good or all bad and I think Awad really highlights these differences in her characterization of Miranda.
So much of the prose was focused on Miranda's inner running dialogue that I did find the world to be a little underdeveloped for my liking. Also, since it is in first person, I wanted Miranda to interact more with the other characters so we could get a better understanding of how these other characters view her. I think Miranda projects a lot of her pain and anger onto people around her but I would have liked to see more of how that type of projection might have affected individual interactions. I also do want to mention that there is a magical healing aspect to the plot that may bother some readers. I don't have any chronic pain or illness so I can't speak to how that aspect of the story was handled from that perspective. I did think the way it was handled was interesting and not really something I had seen before.
Overall, this was a really interesting and immersive lit-fic story that really sunk us deep into the psyche of our main character. However, I would have liked more depth when it came to interactions between characters and the ending so overall this was a pretty middle of the road read for me.
Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC in exchange for review.
Expected publication date August 3, 2021.
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