Fight Night
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4.8 • 5 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
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.
"Toews is a master of dialogue."—New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
When you’re young, every day can be a grand new adventure. Miriam Toews expertly captures that sense of excitement in this tale of three generations of women. Preteen Swiv lives in Toronto with her pregnant mother, who is an actress, and her feisty grandmother. After Swiv’s expelled from school, Grandma gives her an assignment—write a letter to the father who abandoned them. Meanwhile, Grandma is writing her own letter to her unborn grandchild. Toews clearly is having an absolute blast writing in the voice of a precocious nine-year-old—Swiv’s stream-of-consciousness retelling of everything she sees is witty and endearing. But it’s Grandma who commands center stage, with her resilient, positive attitude and lust for life. When the tears come—and they will—they are well earned. Throwing verbal jabs, Toews has created a Fight Night that you’ll want a front-row ticket for.
