Horror Archives - Vellichor Vibes

All’s Well by Mona Awad is a contemporary horror-comedy with a dash of magical realism. It features Miranda Fitch, a college theater professor with debilitating chronic pain, who spends just as much time managing her pain as she does convincing people it’s real. In charge of directing the annual Shakespeare production at her college, she’s decided to produce All’s Well That Ends Well, in spite of a cast of mutinous students who want to put on Macbeth instead. It seems they might have their way and this, too, will be taken from her, until she drowns her sorrows at a bar where she meets three mysterious men and makes a Faustian bargain that appears to change the tides in her favor.

This is a problem play… Neither a tragedy nor a comedy, something in between. Something far more interesting.
Mona Awad, All’s Well

While All’s Well is readable and enjoyable on its own, I would suggest quickly perusing a summary of William Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well in order to enjoy some of the more subtle nuances in this novel. Scholars classify Shakespeare’s play as a “problem play” because it features several problematic themes and generally unpleasant characters. Furthermore, while it contains a formulaic “happy ending” like all his comedies, it is far from satisfying.

Awad masterfully adapts and subverts key moments from All’s Well That Ends Well. A particular favorite of mine is how she treats the bed trick: Shakespeare uses it to prove that in the dark, all women are alike to men. He also gives women that knowledge, which allows them to wield it like a weapon when necessary. In All’s Well, Miranda consistently confuses or imagines her new beau as though he were her ex-husband, and it similarly turns into an exercise to help her get what she wants. It’s not good or nice, but who said power or control was supposed to be either?

Miranda’s experiences with pain also highlight important social commentary about health care professionals doubting women know their own bodies and pain levels. However, because Miranda is so unlikeable, it’s difficult to feel sympathy for her plight. And that is the problem: Miranda has been managing her pain for so long that it is a part of her personality now. Of course she’s unpleasant when no one ever believes she’s in pain, doctors fail to help her, and people and systems appear to collude against her well-being. But I worry that the novel features so many other wild, twisted elements that this critical issue will be easy to forget for those who doubt or question its validity. That certainly proves Awad’s point, but selective ignorance does nothing to help move the conversation forward for real people.

I need to perform my little bit of pain for you so you’ll know I’m human? … A few pretty tears on my cheeks that you can brush away. Just a delicate little bit of ouch so you know there’s someone in there. So you don’t get too scared of me, am I right?” So you know I’m still a vulnerable thing. That I can be brought down if need be.
Mona Awad, All’s Well

As readers barrel towards the conclusion, the novel takes on a sublime, almost Shakespearean quality (rather appropriately). Unexpected magic twists plots beyond recognition and reverses fates without warning. Miranda seems to find easy solutions for some of her biggest problems, but they haunt her to the point of madness at certain points. It’s challenging to keep up with everything, and not even Awad’s engaging voice could stop me from wishing for an intermission. I was somehow both bored and overwhelmed a little over halfway through the novel because I was ready for the climax. The novel felt overwritten while Miranda was at the peak of her madness, and the denouement didn’t give me what I wanted. As much as I enjoyed the beginning of this book, I was confused and unsatisfied by the end. It seems lazy to argue that was by design, given All’s Well That Ends Well is a problem play. I shouldn’t be left feeling as though someone ripped out the last 20 pages of the book!

All’s Well is a creative, macabre romp unlike anything you’ve read before. At times readers are left feeling unmoored and a little anxious as they doubt whether they want to go where the plot will lead. They’ll question who they’re supposed to be rooting for, and if all can ever actually be well for Miranda. But that’s part of the fun: Awad takes Shakespeare’s problem play…and plays with the problems.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for sharing an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling is a horror story built on a foundation of traditional gothic elements. The novel opens with Jane Shoringfield, a pragmatic and mathematically gifted woman who negotiates her own marriage of convenience to Dr. Augustine Lawrence to ensure her continued security and independence. The good doctor only has one request—that Jane spends her nights in a room above his surgery, and he in his labyrinthine home at Lindridge Hall. But that’s easier said than done, and Jane finds herself in Lindridge Hall on her wedding night, where she quickly discovers her new husband is hiding disturbing secrets about his past. That’s only the beginning of her troubles.

Book cover for The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling

She wanted Augustine to be who she’d thought he was. That man would not have lied. That man would have confided in her.
Caitlin Starling, The Death of Jane Lawrence

A problem solver by nature, Jane is doggedly determined to save her husband from the vagaries of his eerie family home, even as they become more and more unexplainable. Regardless, she persists, and it is her resolve that makes her relatable if not likable. The most interesting part of Jane’s character arc is the way she questions her own monstrousness from the very beginning. At first, it’s because she fears she’s focused too heavily on logic over emotion, but as the story progresses, Jane succumbs many times to emotional whims, and interestingly enough, it is only then she becomes unrecognizable. Was she a monster before? Or is The Death of Jane Lawrence the origin story of the monster she becomes?

Starling’s use of magic as a metaphysical concept that challenges Jane’s logical and orderly view of the world is fascinating. As Jane methodically deconstructs and revises what she knows to be true, readers settle into an understanding of how magic is meant to function in Starling’s novel. Particularly creative is Starling’s use of the concept of zero as “everything and nothing,” which serves as the backbone for her depiction of magic. However, I wish Starling had done more to explain the greater role magic plays in her fictional world and why physicians, in particular, practice it. Perhaps it’s meant to parallel the arguably god-like role they take in attempting to cure or reverse injuries and illnesses. Even so, considering Jane manages to learn magic, surely physicians aren’t the only ones who practice. How common is magic in this world? It’s difficult to tell, given Jane’s humble upbringing.

Zero…an empty nothingness, but a nothingness that went on forever, for nothing could have no bounds. The infinite and zero were one. Except that the infinite was the greatest thing in the world, and zero was nothing at all. They were opposite. They were the same.
Caitlin Starling, the Death of Jane Lawrence

Starling’s prose is melodramatic and overwrought, which at first does wonders to establish the picturesque scenery of a gloomy little town in an alternate version of post-war England. However, this strength becomes a weakness during the second half of the novel, where it often feels as though readers could skip pages at a time without losing a sense of the overall plot. The extremely redundant nature of the seven-day spell Jane casts at one point was particularly tedious to read. In general, the prose is beautiful, the details unsettling and gruesome and delightfully spooky, but they’re truly unnecessary after a certain point. Kill your darlings, as they say.

The final “revelation,” which occurs in one particular chapter near the end of the novel, closes the loop with regards to several plot points that seem misleading or arbitrary until readers are plunged into that chapter. It is deeply satisfying…until the novel just keeps going! The Death of Jane Lawrence would’ve been so much spookier if everything had ended right after the revelation. I almost thought that’s where it all ended until I turned the page! Nevertheless, the actual ending is unsettling in its own right. In proper gothic fashion, readers reach the conclusion and wonder how much of it was real and whether the supernatural elements can or should be rationalized. That’s one of my favorite elements in gothic literature, and Starling executes it so well.

A magician gets what she asks for, whether she meant to ask for it or not.
Caitlin Starling, The Death of Jane Lawrence

The Death of Jane Lawrence is a creative take on gothic literature and boasts some of the creepiest scares I’ve seen recently in a novel, especially towards the beginning, when suspense is at an all-time high. I couldn’t walk past reflective surfaces at night for nearly a week without fretting a little! However, the dense prose and excessive, rambling explanations to validate the pseudo-science behind the magic only disorients the reader and makes the second half of the story drag. Despite my misgivings, it is worth checking out if you enjoyed Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic, yet another novel that puts a modern spin on the horror-gothic mash-up with a deliciously slow and suspenseful exploration of the uncanny, or other familiar gothic stories like Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Edith Wharton’s “The Lady’s Maid’s Bell,” or Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for sharing an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Tag: Horror

All’s Well by Mona Awad

The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling

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