Awad shines a Shakespearean light on female pain
It wasn’t until around 2014 that I first heard the term “chronic pain.” It was when cutting out gluten was all the rage, and those proselytizing about the diet proclaimed it could help “reduce inflammation” and “decrease the symptoms of chronic pain.” I didn’t know anyone who suffered from it - openly at least - but as time went on, it became clear it was a silent affliction, given the gaslighting (a phrase that was hardly common parlance back then) that happened when sufferers opened up.
In Alls Well, Awad gives said gaslighting a surrealist, Shakespearean twist. Theatre professor Miranda is one of two remaining employees at a rapidly dwindling but somehow still funded arts department at a small liberal arts college in New England (presumably, Rhode Island). The story opens with our beleaguered protagonist lying prostrate on the floor in the faculty lounge while puffing cigarette smoke out of a window. Miranda is in so much pain - and has taken so many meds to stave it off - that she can barely get up, let alone remember that she has a class to teach, a class that started 15 minutes ago.
Before Miranda was plagued with pain, she was a successful performer herself, a member of a traveling Shakespearean troupe, prestigious in New England’s regional theater communities. Until she fell during a performance of All’s Well. X-rays didn’t show much, but the pain that shot through her leg precluded her from continuing with the traveling troupe and relegated her to the floor of the faculty lounge.
Determined to recapture her former glory and, subconsciously, to recast her pain, Miranda charges forward with a plan to put on Alls Well with the school’s drama program, despite repeated protests from the students and requests to put on Macbeth instead. Miranda persists, becoming increasingly unpopular with the students, and is almost ready to fold until she encounters three mysterious men. She doesn’t know them, but they know her - and they know about her, more than she’s ever shared with anyone - and they promise they have the cure to her pain.
Miranda makes a deal with the men and her life transforms instantly; the pain dissipates instantly and she develops a maniacal zest for life.
As the story develops, so too does Miranda’s descent into madness. As they say, the best works of art are designed to disturb the comfortable, and comfort the disturbed - and, in this case, consider me the former - because I felt deeply anxious (but somehow simultaneously amused - it’s worth noting, Awad certainly has a sense of humor, dry and twisted though it is) the entire time I was reading this book. It’s a wryly observed meditation of the intersection between shame and pain, particularly for women, and it left me both more sympathetic to the cause and determined to read everything else she’s ever written.