Lady M

Mona Awad has a thing for concretizing metaphors. Her second novel, Bunny, featured a cohort of MFA students who conjured lifelike automatons based on their male literary heroes. But the students took the cliché “Kill your darlings” a little too seriously and dispatched their defective drafts with an axe. In Awad’s latest title, All’s Well, that common wish of theatrical good luck is realized through the character of Miranda, whose dramatic career comes to a screeching halt when she falls off a stage and breaks her leg — as well as her hip, her confidence, her relationships, and, eventually, her entire sense of self.

Miranda had been acting Lady Macbeth’s final scene, the point when that character’s guilt bubbles to the surface and appears as blood on her hands — spots that only she can see. It is a startling fall from glory and anticipates that of her husband: the Macbeths begin the play as respected members of the Scottish gentry, and over five acts...