"Move over, Scout Finch! There's a new contender for feistiest girl in fiction, and her name is Swiv." -USA Today, "Best Books of the Year"
"Toews is a master of dialogue." -New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice
"A revelation." -Richard Russo
NPR Best Books of the Year * Shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize * Writers' Trust Fiction Prize Finalist * Indie Next Pick * Amazon Editors' Pick * Apple Book of the Month
From the bestselling author of Women Talking and All My Puny Sorrows, a compassionate, darkly humorous, and deeply wise novel about three generations of women.
“You're a small thing,” Grandma writes, “and you must learn to fight.” Swiv's Grandma, Elvira, has been fighting all her life. From her upbringing in a strict religious community, she has fought those who wanted to take away her joy, her independence, and her spirit. She has fought to make peace with her loved ones when they have chosen to leave her. And now, even as her health fails, Grandma is fighting for her family: for her daughter, partnerless and in the third term of a pregnancy; and for her granddaughter Swiv, a spirited nine-year-old who has been suspended from school. Cramped together in their Toronto home, on the precipice of extraordinary change, Grandma and Swiv undertake a vital new project, setting out to explain their lives in letters they will never send.
Alternating between the exuberant, precocious voice of young Swiv and her irrepressible, tenacious Grandma, Fight Night is a love letter to mothers and grandmothers, and to all the women who are still fighting-painfully, ferociously- for a way to live on their own terms.
Genre: Literary Fiction
"Toews is a master of dialogue." -New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice
"A revelation." -Richard Russo
NPR Best Books of the Year * Shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize * Writers' Trust Fiction Prize Finalist * Indie Next Pick * Amazon Editors' Pick * Apple Book of the Month
From the bestselling author of Women Talking and All My Puny Sorrows, a compassionate, darkly humorous, and deeply wise novel about three generations of women.
“You're a small thing,” Grandma writes, “and you must learn to fight.” Swiv's Grandma, Elvira, has been fighting all her life. From her upbringing in a strict religious community, she has fought those who wanted to take away her joy, her independence, and her spirit. She has fought to make peace with her loved ones when they have chosen to leave her. And now, even as her health fails, Grandma is fighting for her family: for her daughter, partnerless and in the third term of a pregnancy; and for her granddaughter Swiv, a spirited nine-year-old who has been suspended from school. Cramped together in their Toronto home, on the precipice of extraordinary change, Grandma and Swiv undertake a vital new project, setting out to explain their lives in letters they will never send.
Alternating between the exuberant, precocious voice of young Swiv and her irrepressible, tenacious Grandma, Fight Night is a love letter to mothers and grandmothers, and to all the women who are still fighting-painfully, ferociously- for a way to live on their own terms.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Here comes Fight Night, by Miriam Toews of Women Talking! 3 gens of ornery, funny gals, including the 9 year old narrator. Sets standards for grandmotherly swearing and outspokenness I can never hope to match. Go Grandma Elvira!" - Margaret Atwood
"FIGHT NIGHT is a headlong rush of a novel narrated by a precocious nine-year-old girl who is doing everything she can to keep her troubled mother from falling apart and her irrepressible grandmother alive. Tender, heart-wrenching, darkly funny, and ultimately joyful, this novel pulses with life." - Christina Baker Kline
"In Fight Night as in her previous books, Miriam Toews is a genius. Her gigantic mind and heart are singular; her sentence-making powers, extraordinary. Living in a time when Toews is writing is a reason to rejoice." - R O Kwon
"FIGHT NIGHT is a headlong rush of a novel narrated by a precocious nine-year-old girl who is doing everything she can to keep her troubled mother from falling apart and her irrepressible grandmother alive. Tender, heart-wrenching, darkly funny, and ultimately joyful, this novel pulses with life." - Christina Baker Kline
"In Fight Night as in her previous books, Miriam Toews is a genius. Her gigantic mind and heart are singular; her sentence-making powers, extraordinary. Living in a time when Toews is writing is a reason to rejoice." - R O Kwon
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