The somewhat un-PC compliment that keeps coming out of my mouth when I tell friends about Mischa Berlinski's third novel, "Mona Acts Out," is that I can't believe it was written by a man! Both the character of Mona Zahid and the nuances of the #MeToo situation that unfolds in the novel could have led me to assume otherwise if I didn't already know the gender of the Istanbul-based author, whose previous "Fieldwork" and "Peacekeeping" have won acclaim and award notice.

Mona is a fully three-dimensional woman — a celebrated Shakespearean actor in New York City and a long-married mother with a teenage son at home though, as she jokes to that son, "Men are throwing themselves at my feet day and night."

She is also a pillhead and pothead, popping a few painkillers before facing the day, which as the novel opens, happens to be Thanksgiving. This is the first Thanksgiving since her sister Zahra died, which is how she got such a giant bottle of pills. They were pilfered from Zahra's hospice kit, now almost gone. On the other side of her bedroom door are her husband, son, orphaned niece and in-laws. After Berlinski sends Mona begrudgingly out to join them and begin holiday meal preparations, he brilliantly illuminates the history of the family and the "icebergs of discontent" in their generally happy lives.

These involve, among other things, Ultimate Frisbee, the disputed authorship of Shakespeare's plays, Mona's upcoming role in "Twelfth Night," her emotional affair with another actor in her company, the possibility that Phil is attracted to a high school flame, a fight she had with her niece Rachel when taking her to college and complications involving her in-laws, bad coffee and dull knives.

Finally, it is all too much. Mona slips into her bedroom to hit the vape and muses about the fight with Rachel. As we have learned in a prologue, Mona's mentor, Milton Katz, the founder and director of her Shakespeare troupe, has been forced into retirement by an expose in the New York Times in which 11 women accused him of abuse and cruelty. Having revered Milton as long as she has known him, believing that he made her the actor that she is, Mona is an "unabashed Miltophile." But there are complications.

Rachel was one of the sources for the article condemning him.

Mona Acts Out

When the vaping Mona hears this very topic come up for discussion in her kitchen, she leashes her dog Barney, announces she's forgotten to buy parsley and flees. The remainder of the book follows her on a great and life-changing adventure.

Rhapsodic and enlightening about Shakespeare, full of fun on every page, Mischa Berlinski's "Mona Acts Out" is an early literary delight of 2025.

Marion Winik is a Baltimore-based professor and writer.

Mona Acts Out

By: Mischa Berlinski.

Publisher: Liveright, 320 pages, $27.99.