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, her 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.
Although comedic, Fight Night is a touching story that shows the brilliance and versatility of Toews. Her ambitious choice in a nine-year-old narrator in epistolary form is no easy feet yet she effortlessly pulls it off. With central themes of love and survival, this novel is the perfect example of why Toews is such a beloved author.
Readers will be consumed by Fight Night; a smart, witty tribute to love that's both tender and sad. A complete knockout.
MIRIAM TOEWS is the bestselling author of Women Talking, All My Puny Sorrows, Irma Voth, The Flying Troutmans, A Complicated Kindness (Canada Reads 2006, Canada Reads Canadian Bestseller of the Decade 2010), A Boy of Good Breeding, Summer of My Amazing Luck, and one work of non-fiction, Swing Low: A Life.
She is a winner of the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, the Libris Award for Fiction Book of the Year, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and the Writers Trust Marian Engel/Timothy Findley Award.
Toews lives in Toronto.
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