Miriam Toews

Fight Night

Briar's Reviews

Fight Night by Miriam Toews is a delightful read following a nine-year-old Torontonian named Swiv. This young girl lives with her pregnant Mom and Grandma. All three of these women fight for their rights, in a variety of ways. This character study follows the three women, and we learn a lot about their background and how they view the world. Their character growth and journey in this book will make you smile, laugh, and most likely cry (like I did).

Miriam Toews is a master of the literary arts (in my opinion). This book moved me, grabbed me, pulled me in, and kept me there until the end. I will definitely be picking up more books from this marvellous author. Also, Canadian author alert! That made me so happy.

I highly recommend this book if you love Canadian authors, contemporary fiction, character studies, and easy reads. This book was such an easy read, and one I loved sinking back into. It truly is a gem!

Five out of five stars.

Jeannette Ordas

It's February so everything is extra hard. Having a rough go? Maybe this book will give you the spark and fight you need to keep your head above water and get your legs high kicking.

Fran Lewis

Fight Night by Miriam Toews

This is an extremely fun book to read and it is all from the point of view of a nine year old girl called, Swiv. She lives with her pregnant mother and her grandmother. 

This whole book is a letter that Swiv is writing to her father, who had taken off to places unknown. It is a detailed account of her life and that of her family. Some of the scenes are hilarious and make you realize you should always live life to the fullest and enjoy every moment. 

Thank you to netgalley for the advanced copy.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER The beloved author of bestsellers Women Talking, All My Puny Sorrows, and A Complicated Kindness returns with a funny, smart, headlong rush of a novel full of wit, flawless writing, and a tribute to perseverance and love in an unusual family. Fight Night is told in the unforgettable voice of Swiv, a nine-year-old living in Toronto with her pregnant mother, who is raising Swiv while caring for her own elderly, frail, yet extraordinarily lively mother. When Swiv is expelled from school, Grandma takes on the role of teacher and gives her the task of writing to Swiv's absent father about life in the household during the last trimester of the pregnancy. In turn, Swiv gives Grandma an assignment: to write a letter to "Gord," her unborn grandchild (and Swiv's soon-to-be brother or sister). "You’re a small thing," Grandma writes to Gord, "and you must learn to fight." As Swiv records her thoughts and observations, Fight Night unspools the pain, love, laughter, and above all, will to live a good life across three generations of women in a close-knit family. But it is Swiv’s exasperating, wise and irrepressible Grandma who is at the heart of this novel: someone who knows intimately what it costs to survive in this world, yet has found a way—painfully, joyously, ferociously—to love and fight to the end, on her own terms.

Fraser Simons

Edit: I listened to this on audio because I didn’t remember it very well and wanted to talk about it for the Giller Prize. The audio is a superior experience for me,mostly because on the page, sentence-to-sentence, it’s very boring, structurally. A child writes in uncomplicated, short sentences. It gets into an annoying cadence that is not as (most of the time) noticeable when narrated. 

Using the lens of a child we uncover the family dynamics of a 9 year old girl, her mother, and her quirky old grandmother. Though it’s not new territory per se, I found the voice to make sense for the age while still managing to be pretty clever and surprisingly funny, in the way sometimes kids are; meaning they aren’t necessarily trying to be funny but their knowledge gap or disparity in age makes it so. 

This lived up to my expectations, which is something, considering I am not wild about narratives framed like this unless they’re really short. It was engaging and thoughtful, believable, and heavy with an undercurrent of melancholy that feels true to the reckoning of age (many) old people seem to express. But it’s contrasted by the vivacious first person narrative, so feels balanced well enough. If you’re particularly interested in the framing, I feel many readers will click with this more than I did.

From the bestselling author of Women Talking and All My Puny Sorrows, a compassionate, darkly humorous, and deeply wise new 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.

It’s only pain. We don’t worry about pain. It’s not life-threatening. 
!!! 
this book brims, overfloweth with life itself 
best read of the year, hoooooooo

Lindsay Hollmann

Gutted. Laughing at every page and all the while, gutted.

Sol (they/them)

It was great! I am all about Swiv and her Grandma.  This story is thoughtful and bold.

Fight night by Miriam Toews is a novel about a family in Toronto, but it’s characters seem to live in a time and world of their own. Tenacious nine-year-old Swiv is expelled from her school and stays home to care for her grandmother Elvira and manage the household for her depressed mother, pregnant in her third trimester with a baby they affectionately term Gourd. The family in this novel is compelling in their absurd ways and thoughtfully developed.

Swiv’s character is a delightfully bold narrator with a unique perspective. Her telling allows this weighty story to remain humorous and fast paced. Swiv toes the balance between maturity and naïve youth in an interesting foil to her grandma. She not only is responsible for keeping the family running, but she has a strong grasp at the consequences of her actions. Elvira, her grandma, has a whimsical personality but beneath it is a woman who has had to fight for her family and come to terms with her mortality. Despite the playfulness of the writing and characters, this novel carries heavy messages and covers sensitive topics. This is seen in most of the scenes with Swiv’s mother, whom Swiv sees as a mostly-endearing basket case. While all the characters have internal struggles and a troubled history, Swiv’s mother is the only one whose story is explicitly told. Elvira recounts a series of events that happened to Swiv’s mother that explain some of her erratic behaviors and beliefs. The perspectives of the book are part of what make it so interesting and engaging. The novel is presented as a letter from Swiv to her missing father, but the shifts of perspective make it much more than that. Another interesting thing to note is the lack of male perspective. The few male characters in this novel are not centered and their thought are not available to us. You could argue that the dad is an important character as the book is a letter to him, but I instead believe the letter is a way for Swiv to understand her own place in the story. This may frame the book as a ‘girl power’ story, but it is so much more than that. This novel is no light read, and the messages within it are not undermined by the playful tone. Overall, it is a very unique investigation of issues of womanhood, mental illness, power, and death. This book is an instant classic that will leave a lasting impact on its readers.