Meeting Report: October 2022

The DCBC met on Sunday, October 30, 2022 to discuss October's book: All’s Well, by Mona Awad (selected by Melissa).

Attendees were: Melissa, Annabelle, Ashley, Emily O., Emily Y., Jessy, Lauren, Miriam, and Sarah. 

“We all fall, Ms. Fitch. We fall and we rise. Bones and tissue heal. But sometimes we want to hold on to the pain. Sometimes we have our reasons for not being able to let go.”

― Mona Awad, All's Well

All's Well is a novel about a theatre director at a small college, Miranda Fitch. She is a former stage actress after an accident left her with chronic back (and hip) pain (it's both, always both). She is determined to stage Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well, the play that she herself was starring in before her literal fall from the stage left her in pain and now divorced. The students, led by the shining Briana, stage a mutiny to put on Macbeth instead. Miranda, faced with the reality that Briana's parents are the theatre department's primary patrons, then meets three weird gentlemen who offer her the remedy for her pain and a solution to her production woes. 

All's Well draws from its namesake play, as well as Macbeth, frequently throughout the novel, as well as allusions to Doctor Faustus for the magical elements within this book. Our discussion went into these themes, how female pain is believed (and not) in society, Miranda's experiences with, and the symbolism of, her physical therapists, Miranda's relationships with her students, coworkers, and ex-husband--Mona Awad gave us quite a lot to talk about!

Overall, the group's opinions were mixed--several of us really liked it, and several of us did not, or rather did not like Miranda (and she is a very, very flawed character)--but I think everyone got something out of the discussion and took away something they didn't know or hadn't thought about before.

The Verdict:

Taken from the average DCBC member ratings on Goodreads who had marked the book as read and rated at the time of this writing:

All’s Well: 4 stars

Thank you to Melissa for hosting!

Next Month: November 2022: The Princess Beard, by Delilah Dawson and Kevin Hearne (selected by Emily Y.)

As always, the full book list for this cycle can be found here.

Lastly, a point of Club Business: We are approaching the end of our current cycle, which means it is time to think about which books we will be selecting for our next cycle. According to The Rules! of our club, members in good standing are eligible to select a book for the next cycle. Based on attendance so far, it looks like we will have a shorter cycle this next time around, so in order to make things easier on people and because we want as many people to be able to participate as possible, there will be a minor change to The Rules going forward. Rather than needing to commit to attending at least three meetings PER CYCLE (your own book, plus two more), you will now need to attend at least three meetings within the previous 12 MONTHS. This will allow for times, as now, when we have a shorter cycle and to allow our members to come in and out of "active" status as their life circumstances allow--and easily rejoin and pick more books for us to read in the future! Please let me know if there are any questions in the Comments below.