All's Well

All’s Well (2021) is a contemporary novel by Canadian author Mona Awad that blends elements of dark academia, surrealism, and supernatural horror. Drawing from her own experiences with chronic pain, Awad tells the story of Miranda Fitch, a college theater professor whose life and career have been derailed by chronic paining following an injury. As Miranda desperately attempts to stage a college production of Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well, she finds herself at the center of strange and unsettling events that promise a reversal of her fortunes.

Awad is also the author of the critically acclaimed novels Bunny, which was a finalist for the New England Book Award, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, which was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and Rouge, which was named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post. Bunny and Rouge have been optioned for films.

This guide is based on the 2022 Marysue Rucci Books/Scribner trade paperback edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain discussions of illness and death, substance use, suicidal ideation, sexual content, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and gender discrimination.

Plot Summary

Miranda Fitch is a former actor who is now working as a college theater professor. She lives with debilitating chronic pain stemming from a career-ending stage accident. The pain has destroyed her marriage to her ex-husband, Paul, and has made her bitter and emotionally volatile. As she prepares for rehearsals of the college’s annual Shakespeare production, she faces a mutiny from her students. Miranda is determined to direct All’s Well That Ends Well, a play of deep personal significance to her since she was acting in it when she met Paul. It represents a time in her life when she was healthy and happy. However, her cast, led by the privileged and beautiful lead actress Briana and her boyfriend Trevor, is intent on staging Macbeth instead.

Miranda’s authority is further undermined by her strained relationship with her colleague and assistant director, Grace. While they were once close, their friendship has cooled ever since Grace suggested Miranda’s pain might be psychosomatic. Fauve, an adjunct at the college, openly criticizes Miranda’s methods. Only Ellie, a quiet and talented student with an intuitive sense of Miranda’s physical suffering, is genuinely supportive. Miranda secretly wishes Ellie could play the lead role of Helen, but the less-talented Briana has been cast instead, due to her parents’ financial contributions to the program.

During a disastrous rehearsal session, the students’ rebellion comes to a head. Trevor openly challenges Miranda’s choice of play, and the other students show their discontent. Afterward, Miranda meets Grace for drinks at a local pub called The Canny Man. Overwhelmed by pain and humiliation, Miranda drinks heavily despite her medication. After Grace leaves, Miranda remains at the bar and encounters three mysterious men in dark suits. The trio displays an uncanny knowledge of her medical history and offers her a “golden remedy” (43): a drink that provides immediate, though temporary, relief from her suffering.

Miranda’s life continues to spiral. Her pain worsens, and a session with her dismissive physical therapist, Mark, proves fruitless. Desperate, she makes a tearful phone call to Paul, who is unsympathetic. Then, Ellie appears at her office to warn her that the other cast members are filing a formal complaint with the dean to get the play changed to Macbeth. Sensing that Miranda is in great physical pain, Ellie gives her a bag of the botanical bath salts she makes. She believes they have curative powers. Miranda agrees to use it, though she doesn’t plan to.

She then seeks treatment from John, an unlicensed physical therapist, but again finds no relief. In intense pain, Miranda contemplates suicide while driving home after this appointment, but she instead returns to The Canny Man. The three men are there and offer her another golden drink. They tell her that pain can be transferred and demonstrate a “trick”: The fat man from the trio, who looks ill and tired, grabs Miranda’s wrist, and she collapses, overwhelmed by an intense, unfamiliar pain while he begins to look increasingly refreshed and energetically performs a karaoke song.

The next morning, Miranda awakens in her bed, free from the foreign agony and finding her own chronic pain has returned to a bearable level. Her relief is short-lived, however, as she learns from Grace that the students, with Fauve’s encouragement, have successfully staged a coup. The administration, pressured by Briana’s donor parents, has officially replaced All’s Well That Ends Well with Macbeth. Miranda rushes to the theater to confront her cast. She grabs Briana’s wrist while trying to get her copy of the play script and immediately notices Briana’s eyes widen in shock at her touch. Afterward, Briana looks like she is in intense pain, but Miranda is distracted by the arrival of the dean. He reveals that some “local businessmen” have given the college’s theater program a generous donation on the condition that they stage All’s Well That Ends Well. While everyone is surprised at this turn of events, Miranda guesses that the three men from the pub—who call themselves The Weird Brethren—are responsible.

Miranda is reinstated as director, and her authority is restored. Her personality shifts dramatically; she becomes energetic, confident, and her relationships change. The students become fearful and obedient. Hugo, the set designer, is impressed by her newfound vitality and begins to pursue her romantically. Meanwhile, Briana is absent from rehearsals and Miranda hears that she has been struck by a mysterious, debilitating illness with symptoms identical to those Miranda used to suffer. Ellie, who is Briana’s understudy, plays Helen during rehearsals, just like Miranda wanted. Grace grows suspicious of Miranda’s sudden transformation and the strange events.

During a subsequent physical therapy session with Mark, Miranda arrives feeling miraculously better. Mark, angered by her claim that she improved without his program, performs an aggressive traction maneuver that causes her pain to return catastrophically. As Miranda grabs Mark’s wrist to pull herself up from the floor, her pain vanishes and appears to transfer to him, causing him to collapse.

One afternoon, Briana returns to rehearsal, looking very ill. She even has the same limp that Miranda used to have. Unable to play the physically demanding role of Helen, insists on playing the ailing King. Her performance is surprisingly powerful. During a confrontation after rehearsal, Briana accuses Miranda of having made her sick by touching her wrist. Miranda dismisses her concerns but rushes out of rehearsal soon after, refusing to discuss the accusations with Grace. Miranda goes to The Canny Man, and Grace follows her there and discovers her in a strange confrontation with The Weird Brethren in the pub’s basement. Unnerved by what she has just seen, Grace flees. Miranda follows her into the pub’s parking lot, trying to convince her that she is in an experimental play with the three men, who are only actors. When Grace slips and falls, Miranda helps her up and touches Grace’s wrist. Immediately, Grace becomes immobilized with pain. When Miranda drives her home, she remains slumped quietly in her seat, unable to even talk. Miranda tucks her in bed, feeling increasingly guilty that she caused this.

Meanwhile, Hugo and Miranda begin a sexual relationship. Hugo is genuinely interested in Miranda, but he is disturbed by her increasingly erratic behavior. She keeps confusing him with Paul and insists that Hugo hit her during sex. When she gets a deep cut on her leg, Hugo bandages it for her but is unnerved when he discovers that she cannot feel pain.

Briana and her parents file a formal complaint against Miranda. At a meeting with the dean, Briana accuses Miranda of witchcraft, saying she caused Briana’s illness by touching her wrist. However, the dean dismisses the charge as farfetched and a product of stress. Afterward, Fauve attempts to expose Miranda’s sexual relationship with Hugo by producing a pair of Miranda’s underwear she found on the stage, but the dean is too embarrassed to pursue this claim. Following the meeting, Miranda tries to contact Grace, who has not been showing up for rehearsals and is not answering Miranda’s calls. Miranda sends Grace gifts and groceries when Grace again doesn’t answer the phone. Miranda suspects that she is the reason Grace is ill and homebound. Wrought with guilt, Miranda grows increasingly detached from reality,

Before opening night, Ellie confesses to Miranda that she believes she caused Briana’s illness by her intense longing to play Helen. Miranda reasons that this is not true, but Ellie remains upset. Then, she tells Miranda that she can cure Briana just like she cured Miranda with her bath salts. She gives Miranda another bag of bath salts—that Miranda absentmindedly slips into her pocket—and Ellie then claims she will fix everything. Later that night, Miranda is still worried and guilty about Grace. Instead of going home, she goes to a beach and walks into the ocean with her clothes on. She unintentionally bathes in Ellie’s bath salts that seep out of her pocket.

On opening night, Miranda feels disoriented and haunted. She arrives late to the theater, disheveled from sleeping on the beach. Before the play begins, she believes she hears other music and wanders from the main stage into the black box theater. There, she confronts a series of surreal visions: Grace’s dead body in a staged version of Grace’s living room, a re-enactment of Miranda’s own medical trauma, and finally an idyllic fantasy of a life with Paul and a baby daughter named Ellie. When she is forced to choose between this fantasy and saving the real Grace, she chooses Grace, and the illusion shatters.

Miranda returns to the main stage just as the cast is taking its curtain call after a successful performance. Confused, she believes the play is just beginning and recites lines from Macbeth on the stage. Briana—looking suddenly healthy and happy—rushes toward her, and in her disoriented state, Miranda backs away and falls off the stage, re-creating her original accident. She awakens in the dressing room, physically uninjured but feeling the dull return of her chronic pain. Ellie informs her that three male “doctors” from the audience pronounced her fine, and Miranda realizes they must have been the Three Weird Brethren. Briana appears once again, looking healthy, and Ellie greets her happily. Grace then arrives, alive and well, explaining that she suddenly recovered from her illness.

Grace and Miranda reconcile at The Canny Man, apologizing for their past behavior. Grace recounts the successful opening night, which included Ellie miraculously healing Briana onstage, after which the girls danced and kissed in joy. Grace also informs Miranda that Hugo was moved by the play and is waiting for Miranda at her apartment. As a storm gathers, Grace decides to leave, but Miranda stays behind, waiting alone at the bar for her reckoning with the three men. She asks the bartender for the golden remedy, but he refuses to serve it to her. The storm breaks, and she is overwhelmed by a powerful wind that shatters the bar’s windows and whips her hair around her face. She can hear the voices of the three men, who tell her the wheel of fortune is always turning, and she feels her chronic pain return. When the storm passes, Miranda is left in the shattered pub. Her pain and her capacity for joy are both restored, and she recalls bathing in the sea with the dried flowers from Ellie’s bath salts surrounding her.