Fight Night

From the best-selling 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, partner-less 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.

©2021 Miriam Toews (P)2021 Knopf Canada

Addicting!

This story and the performances were so compelling that I could hardly stop listening.

really enjoyed!

Our narrator is an 8 year old who speaks just like her mom and grandma. the characters are compelling and the story centers on relationships.

Tragedy and comedy meets in one short book

Beautiful novel. Very light and magical. A very well executed combination of tragedy and comedy. Life seen through a child’s eyes.

Delightful

I laughed and I cried. What more could you ask for? I love this family 💜

Love it

What a beautiful human story creatively told. The grandmother of as so inspiring. Not sure what else to say about it.