ALL'S WELL (2021)

All's Well by Mona Awad
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
On sale: August 3, 2021

Why, yes, I do often judge a book by its cover, and Mona Awad's "All's Well" has a stunning one - a comedy mask decorated with a variety of colored pills. How could I not read a book concerning chronic illness and theatre?

FIRST SENTENCE: "I'm lying on the floor watching, against my will, a bad actress in a drug commercial tell me about her fake pain."

THE STORY: Miranda Fitch, a once promising young actress, has watched her enchanted life disappear after a fall from the stage. Now burdened with chronic pain, she is reduced to accepting a teaching position at a community college where theater is merely part of the English Department. Determined that "All's Well That Ends Well" will be the fall production, Miranda has to convince her mutinying students who expected to be performing The Scottish Play. How she does that, and all that follows, is fascinating, confusing, and disturbing but in a good way. Am I right?

WHAT I THOUGHT: Although referred to as funny, a dark comedy, it is also painful, a tragedy or perhaps somewhere in between. I was often amused and once brought to tears. Going on this journey with an unreliable narrator is disconcerting and disturbing but also exciting and fascinating. After a straightforward opening narrative, the plot blossoms into magical realism leaving the reader questioning what is real.

BOTTOM LINE: If you want to read something different, something unique; if you've felt alone suffering from chronic pain; if you love Shakespeare and theatre, this might be just the escape you are looking for.

DISCLAIMER: Thank you to the author, NetGalley, and Simon & Schuster for the review copy for an honest review.

View all my reviews

Fanfare and The Wee Book & Photo Studio

It took me five months but I was finally able to visit two more independent bookstores although it did not happen the way I expected.

Last week we made our yearly trip to Stratford, Ontario in Canada to see theater. It's a four hour trip so the first day we saw Waiting for Godot in the evening. The following morning we headed for Callan's. Every year I would talk to the proprietor and get suggestions for new authors. Mostly Canadian writers, Mr. Callan helped me discover Stuart Pawson, Howard Engel, and Donna Leon among others.

The Wee Book and Photo Shop

Imagine our surprise to find that Mr. Callan had sold his store and retired! Now called The Wee Book and Photo Shop, sisters Maureen and Suzanne share the space. One sells books and the other takes photographs including ones in costumes. Check out their website.

Wandering down Ontario Street you will find several additional bookstores, but the one that caught my fancy was Fanfare Books. It is one of those dangerous places that will quickly part you with your money even when you have pledged, as I recently did, to allow no more books into your life.

Fanfare Books

I must confess that I purchased Stuart Pawson's The Picasso Scam (first of his police procedural series and you can't find his books easily in the US), Alafair Burke's Long Gone (got it from the library but had to return it before I had a chance to read it and besides it was on the tempting outside sale table); The Shakespeare Miscellany (well, I was at a Shakespeare Festival after all), and A Writer's Space by Eric Maisel (an impulse purchase).

Peg browsing the sale books

That makes three independent bookstores visited this year and enough new books added to my collection to keep me busy for a very long time.

An Interesting Quote

David Tennant regards ‘Yorick’ in the Royal Shakespeare Company production of Hamlet

"Anyway, the fascinating thing was that I read in National Geographic that there are far more people alive now than have died in all of human history. In other words, if everyone wanted to play Hamlet at once, they couldn't because there aren't enough skulls!" (Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer)