In her much-anticipated new novel, “All’s Well,†Mona Awad takes her powerful spin on womanhood to a new level.
At first, her protagonist Miranda Fitch appears to inhabit a disparate world compared to Lizzie in “13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl,†her award-winning debut, and Samantha Mackey in “Bunny,†her second, but as this third novel progresses it’s clear Awad is continuing her dark exploration of the female psyche — and once again proving she’s a dab hand at championing contemporary female outsiders struggling in narratives beyond their control.
Speaking recently from her home in Boston, Awad talks eagerly about inspirations and her affinity to outsider stories. Born and raised in Montreal, Awad says she always felt like an outsider.
“My mother was French-Canadian Catholic of Serbian Irish decent, and my father is Egyptian and Muslim,†she said. “Although I was never baptized, I went to an English Catholic school. Neither of my parents taught me their languages, so I always felt a little outside of things, even in places I’m supposed to belong, like my family.â€
Not fitting in encouraged Awad to observe and listen at an early age, and then write based on what she saw and heard. “I loved writing skits, that’s what first had me writing.â€
Her writing eventually morphed into poetry. Awad credits American confessional poets — particularly Allen Ginsberg’s “HOWL†— for giving her teenage self permission to take her writing seriously.
“As a teenager, I also loved all of Margaret Atwood’s novels,†she said. “Her work has been so important to me.â€
“All’s Well†is a testament to this love, as well as that for Shakespeare and fairy tales.
When we first meet Miranda, she is anything but what the title suggests. Trapped in the prison of her chronic pain, her days are a blur of dissociative behaviour, pills and appointments. No one takes her pain seriously, yet they freely judge her for it.
Awad knows the world of chronic pain and rehab well from her own experience with hip surgery.
“It has you questioning your grasp on reality,†she said. “I began to wonder if I was the one who was failing because I wasn’t conforming to the progressive narrative of how the healing was supposed to go. I feel a lot of people have experienced this in their lives — particularly women — and that’s where the book started.â€
Awad was teaching at the time, reading Shakespeare for solace, when the character of Miranda popped into her head: a former actor who now teaches, who endlessly revisits her glorious past as the lead in Shakespeare’s “All’s Well That Ends Well,†the play responsible for making and breaking her career via a life-changing stage accident. Miranda wants to recreate the production with her students, but they want to do “Macbeth.†Awad mines the invisibility of female pain while spoofing the comedic aspects of the former play and the tragedy of the latter.
The best descriptor might be to imagine Margaret Atwood and Angela Carter traipsing through the dreamy creepiness of fairy tales while giving Shakespeare tips on female narratives.
“While writing the book, I always pictured this woman straightening out her little towels in her guest bathroom while her house is on fire,†Awad notes.
A key component of Shakespearean and fairy-tale narratives is character transformations, a subject close to Awad’s heart. It’s something she studied extensively while writing her dissertation on fear in the fairy tale for her master’s of research in English literature at the University of Edinburgh in 2006; a degree she sandwiched between her BA in English literature from York University and her master of fine arts in fiction from Brown.
“The experience of reading fairy tales in a place that looks like one was very informative. Scotland isn’t afraid of darkness and humour — two things I love — so even though I was an outsider, I felt very at home.
“‘All’s Well’ really explores the transformation story,†she continues. “It’s something I discovered in ‘13 Ways.’ There’s a change in your nature when you undergo a very dramatic physical transformation — a change in your soul and your heart — and it’s not necessarily for the good; it’s different.â€
At times, exploring these transformations is troubling for Awad, but they’re fundamental as the foundation for all her novels.
This narrative technique began during a brief internship Awad did at Montreal’s Maisonneuve magazine at the end of 2005, just before heading to Scotland. She created a column under the nom de plume Veronica Tartley: a food critic with a fraught relationship with food. Writing the column served as a bridge to writing fiction, and the transformation of writing through her character’s eyes expanded Awad’s vision beyond her outsider sense of self and allowed her to hone a female gaze she knew others would relate to.
Fast forward to 2009 when Awad began her PhD in creative writing and English literature at the University of Denver, and Tartley became the prototype for her female protagonists. “13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl,†her novel in the format of a series of linking stories revolving around female self-hatred, began to take shape. Six years in the making, Awad’s unflinching yet sensitive observations of the female experience resonated worldwide when it was published in 2015.
Her followup, “Bunny†takes the transformational story down a much darker path, as Awad gives female tribalism and desire a surrealist spin. Upon its release in 2019, Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner of “Girls†fame were smitten, with Konner writing a television treatment that was recently picked up by Regency Productions, and Margaret Atwood tweeted “O Bunny you are sooo genius!â€
Now, of course, “All’s Well†continues Awad’s specific brand of female narrative.
On a personal level, though, these days she’s feeling a little more grounded than she has before. The exciting opportunities that living in the U.S. offers outweigh any challenges, Awad says. A professor in the creative writing MFA program at the University of Syracuse, alongside literary luminaries George Saunders and Mary Karr, her outsider status isn’t issue.
“I’d like to think it makes me more myself. I’m never at home, but then home becomes me.â€
Elizabeth Mitchell is a º£½ÇÉçÇø¹ÙÍøwriter and editor.
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