Summary

The novel opens with Miranda laying on the floor of her shabby office, her lower body a network of pain she describes in excruciating detail. She is waiting to watch a YouTube video of her performance as Helen, the female lead in Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well, but must first endure a long advertisement for a prescription pain reliever promising a joyous, luxurious life free from chronic pain. Miranda ignores the scolding voice of her colleague Fauve, a junior teaching staff member specializing in musical theater whom Miranda despises as a nemesis, but welcomes her assistant director and friend Grace into the office to share a forbidden smoke before class. Miranda draws encouragement from Grace’s hearty Puritan forthrightness to face her students, as they have lost faith in her competent authority and have begun to foment a small revolt...