The encounter leaves Miranda free of her pain, finally but at what cost?
“You start reaching the borders of physicians' knowledge,” she says.
I wanted to inhabit that feeling of helplessness."
Mona Awad and the cover of her book ‘All’s Well’.twitter; amazon
Every relationship [in the book] is a way to explore how pain creates divides and distance."
But the book also tackles our own limits of compassion.
“Wellness is a base, a default state,” she says.
She still needed to articulate it but how do you describe something invisible?
But Awad relied on the magical realism of the novel precisely because words often failed her.
“It is such an unspeakable experience.
“It leans into the fantastic to express the real trauma.”
All’s Wellstrives to give a surrealist framework through which to understand pain.
The result is a portrait of trauma that lingers, whether all ends well or not.
All’s Wellis out August 3 through Simon & Schuster.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
