I haven’t read anything by Toews until Fight Night, but this book has definitely made me more interested in reading more from her.

Swiv, nine-years-old and living in Toronto, is tasked by her grandmother to write to Swiv’s absent father. In Swiv’s voice, we learn of her grandmother and mother, and the family as a whole, a family made up of fighters. We travel to California and back, all in an unforgettable voice. Writing a child’s point of view is hard. Writing a child’s point of view for an adult audience is an incredibly difficult task, and I always admire the authors who can do it well. Toews does is very well indeed.

We get everything filtered through Swiv, causing some absolutely brilliant laugh out loud moments. But there’s also times you want to wrap her up and hug her so tight, where you can’t help but feel deeply for her and her family. She speaks not just to her absent father, but also to her unborn sibling, Gord, who she feels bad for leaving alone with their mother.

Swiv’s voice does come through as a little mature for her age at times, but as the book went on it felt more like Swiv is mature, in a way some kids are who go through a lot at such a young age. Although her grandmother takes over her schooling, it becomes clear Swiv acts more as a carer to her gran, ensuring she takes her pills, picking up after her, running errands with her.

For me, some of Swiv’s attitude spoke to anxiety, filtered through a child’s eyes who doesn’t necessarily have the words to describe a panic attack, or who is constantly worried about the next bad thing to happen, but even with these there’s a funny tone to it, as she looks at the harmless things adults are doing and comes to the worst conclusion. There are times, too, where the adults talk of sex or make innuendos around her, making Swiv constantly awkward and embarrassed. It’s really endearing, throughout, to see Swiv’s reaction to the situations she’s in, and to feel how embarrassed she is by her family, while also coming to love her grandmother and mother as much as we love Swiv.

I repeat: I absolutely loved Swiv. She’s endearing, and wonderful, and despite the things getting thrown at her, she takes everything in stride. Her mother and grandmother are eccentric, embarrassing, and fierce, raising a girl to be strong-willed and to fight and be true to herself, the most important lesson her grandmother teaches her. This book is heart warming and sweet and at times, yes, sad, and it all works together wonderfully.

Thank you to Faber and Faber for providing me a copy of this book via NetGalley.

Swiv is 9 years old, living with her pregnant mother and brilliant grandmother in Toronto.
This is all about family, home, women, love and fighting to be who you are. It’s darkly funny and so vibrant, tender and life-affirming without being cloying or mawkish.
The writing is beautiful with sharp sentences which zing off the page.
Just perfect! My first Miriam Toews work but not my last - I’ve just bought All My Puny Sorrows.
Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC. All views are my own.

This was such a delightful, poignant, funny and touching read. Narrated by 9 year old Swiv, it’s a slice of life, intergenerational story about an eccentric family. Swiv’s youthful interpretations of her family history are so genuine and entertaining.
The writing style is unique and fast paced and can take a little bit to get used to, but it really works for the story.

Three generations of bold, feisty, funny females residing under one roof. All of them fighting the world around them as well as their inner demons; and for one of them, the looming specter of her impending mortality. No plot to speak of, just three quirky, vibrant characters; two of them unforgettable.

Meet Grandma: outspoken, witty, and falling apart. A brilliant mind in an ailing body, Grandma needs “thousands” of pills a day to keep her alive. But, she still finds the energy to rail against misogyny, patriarchy and everything authoritarian, and is fighting to live long enough to instill the same values in her granddaughter. Her incessant laughter, indomitable spirit and unbridled lust for life sprinkle joy across every page.

Meet heavily pregnant Mom. When not out at rehearsals for the play she’s in, she shouts a lot and shuts herself in her room. Mom fights with everybody and everything, but her love for her mother and her daughter is a fierce, burning thing.

Meet precocious, eight year-old Swiv, an old head on young shoulders. Excluded from school for fighting, she spends her days taking care of Grandma, picking her pills up off the floor, and doing unconventional, Grandma-style lessons. Her biggest fight now is keeping Grandma alive.

This epistolary narrative is presented in the form of a letter — almost a stream of consciousness — written by Swiv to her absent father, detailing the minutiae of her home life. Her voice is delightfully believable, alternating between the rambling hyperbole of a child and the cynical observations of someone much more worldly. And there’s humor too. Lots of it.

I’ll admit that I found the narrative style a challenge to begin with: page after page of dense, unbroken text. But I quickly adapted and by a quarter way through was fully invested in the characters and the story. Towards the end, when Grandma, accompanied by Swiv, makes a spontaneous trip to California to spend time with her two nephews, I sensed what was coming. Was this to be Grandma’s last hurrah, her farewell?

This incredible novel knocked me for six. A beautiful homage to the most wonderful of human bonds. My first Toews, but certainly not my last.

A story about three generations of females from the same family, told form the perspective of 9 year old Swiv. The lack of speech marks made it not a particularly easy read but it was a great story. Swiv is writing to her absent father and worrying about her grandmother and pregnant mother. It's written with plenty of heart and plenty of humour.
It's the first book I've read by Miriam Toews but it definitely will not be the last.

A funny, chaotic, and heartbreaking story told by the POV of a six years old. A choral story featuring women of all ages and the circle of life. An ailing grandma, a child, and heavily pregnant mother (it made me think of the virgin, the mother and the crone), great characters that I loved.
The author is a master storyteller and I fell in love with the style of writing.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

"Fight Night" is my belated introduction to the brilliance of Canadian nine-novel-strong author Miriam Toews, and what an intro it is. Told from the pen of eight-year-old Swiv, a girl of wide-ranging mind and little tolerance for cant, the novel is a breathless journey over days of decline of her ailing, magnificent Grandma and final days of pregnancy of Mom, herself a volatile package. Swiv is suspended from school and is a beguiling mix of utter cynic and devotee of her mother and grandmother. The days are a blur of regular activity, until Grandma spontaneously books a flight from Toronto to California, and Swiv accompanies her on a chaotic journey of last rites. And the end approaches … The author is an utterly immersive stylist, forcing this reader to fall quite in love with brave young Swiv, and toward the end, the tension is as fierce as with a thriller. Fight Night is a blast of high-octane literary fiction that brings the essence of life into our hearts.

Wonderful! I loved this book told from the perspective of Swiv, who is being home-schooled, after a fashion, by her grandmother, while her heavily pregnant mother is off rehearsing. Swiv writes letters to her absent father, as a form of therapy, and the narrative of the novel consists of these. Exuberant, funny, moving and heartbreaking, I will be recommending the novel to customers and colleagues alike.

Fight Night by Miriam Toews is an exuberant and compelling story about three generations of women, living together in a house in Toronto which is loud, chaotic and full of cursing but, at its heart, brimming with love.

Our nine-year-old narrator Swiv lives with pregnant Mom and elderly Grandma. When Swiv is expelled from school for fighting, Grandma is tasked with homeschooling, and her highly alternative yet often practical approaches provide many of the early laughs in this book - from Sudoku and poaching eggs to analysing dreams and the mathematics of killing a person through prayer. The narrative is laced with idiosyncratic household habits (like their family ‘Editorial Meetings’), exclamations and lively dialogue, which infuse the story with great energy. The first half of the novel deals largely with their simple day-to-day activities, focusing on building up a vivid portrait of these characters and their family dynamic. In the second half of the novel, when Grandma decides she wants to take a trip to California to visit her nephews Lou and Ken, Swiv embarks with her on the adventure of a lifetime, where she learns more about both Mom and Grandma’s pasts, her wider family history and, ultimately, herself.

Grandma is without a doubt the life and soul of this book, a joyful and hilarious character. Her ageing body can no longer keep up with her brilliant and fearless mind, and it’s her antics and exuberant exclamations that draw most of the laughs in this story. She has lived a wild and full life. However, beneath the humorous overtones permeating this book, more serious themes are explored, and Grandma is often at the heart of these passages too. For every wisecrack, she also has a more subdued and well-considered word of wisdom or knowledge to impart, and Toews deftly builds up a beautiful, loving relationship between grandmother and granddaughter.

With Mom often absent or absent-minded, Swiv is left to largely take care of ageing Grandma, and take on most of the chores around the house; no doubt contributing to her overthinking and chronic worrying, and making her appear older than her young years. She loves her family but seems to be perpetually embarrassed by them. Yet we also learn that Swiv’s feelings lie somewhere between shame and admiration for Grandma and Mom’s strength and independence; because female strength and resilience, and women lifting each other up, is at the heart of this novel. Grandma tells Swiv, ‘you have a fire inside you and your job is to not let it go out.’

The concept of fighting in life also lies at the heart of this novel; from Swiv fighting in school to Mom and Grandma fighting to keep existence meaningful, fighting for justice, fighting against discrimination, fighting against their own demons, and fighting for full control of their lives. Along with the overarching theme of fighting for our lives, Toews touches on themes of broken families, trauma, mental illness and suicide, misogyny and patriarchal societies, and ageism. There are wonderful passages with Grandma and her friends, exploring how the spirited elderly fight to retain control of their lives.

Toews’ writing style here is almost breathless at times, heightened by the fact that there are no quotation marks; the narrative and dialogue flow as one. This serves to sweep us up and carry us along on a tidal wave of energy, spontaneity, and cracking humour; slowing intermittently to explore the more serious themes addressed. Fight Night is a vibrant and poignant story of family in all its strengths, flaws and idiosyncrasies, propelled by its brilliantly conjured characters, and is an absolute joy to read.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for my digital ARC.

Fight Night by Miriam Toews .
An original and chaotic account of nine year old Swiv who was recently expelled from school and is now being somewhat homeschooled by her elderly grandmother, Elvira ,a likeable and quirky woman who doesn’t mix her words easily . Her mother is heavily pregnant and is trying to deal with her own mental health issues . Thus the parenting of this unconventional family is borne by nine year old Seiv. She begins to write letters to her absentee father to help her process her situation .

This writing style took a while to get used to as it written in the words of Swiv. I look forward to reading previous books by this author as I’m sure her unique style will appeal to others .

Thank you to NetGalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review

Three generations of strong females in a witty family narrative

The scattershot approach to narrative took a little while to settle into, but I adored this very quickly. Narrated by a precocious 9 year old in a family of tough but quirky women, Swiv (it's never made clear what this is short for) observes her pregnant mother navigating her theatre job whilst keeping the family afloat. And her energetic but medicated grandmother ("Today she has the Triple Scoop Sundae. Gout, trigeminal neuralgia, angina. With a topping of arthritis") attempts to home school Swiv - excluded for fighting - in some fairly unconventional subjects.

"...Maths Class... If you've got a two thousand-piece puzzle of an Amish farm and you manage to add three pieces to the puzzle per day, how many more days will you need to stay alive to get it done?"

Swiv is certainly getting an education. Bright, probing and telling us about everything she sees and hears around her, we really are listening in to family conversations at the same time as understanding Swiv's thoughts on subjects that often go above her level of understanding. Swiv is writing all this to a father who left.

And so we share living space with these three ladies over the course of several weeks, as they interact, care for each other, and wait for the arrival of Gord, Swiv's gestating sibling.

It's absolutely hilarious, not just the family and interactions but Swiv's interpretations of them. And it builds to a climax both bittersweet and perfect, that left me wanting to return to Swiv's life later to see how they are doing.

Some marvellous writing here. Not the easiest of beach reads, but three wonderful female characters navigating the modern world with strength and humour. A recommendation.

With thanks to Netgalley for providing a sample reading copy.

The story of a dysfunctional family due to trauma told from the point of view of a 9 years old in a sort of monologue/letter to an absentee father. I usually love novels where the narrator is a child, as I really enjoy the think outside the box type of view children usually have. But in this instance the narrator voice seems to be at odds: the constant repetition of "she said"/"I've said" pair with the "wealth" of details would lead one to think the narrator is indeed 9. But then the actual content points at her being way older than her 9 years and not in a good way. This is the type of family I cannot warm up to, and in many ways it confirms all the negative stereotypes one is used to associate with dysfunctional families. All this resulted in me being very bored and after trudging through the first half, I've ended up skimming the second half just to be done with it....

I struggled to get into this book and didn’t end up finishing it. The narrative isn’t quite clear which makes it hard to follow.

I cannot provide a full review based on the fact that I didn’t finish the book but hope others have better luck.

Wonderfully joyful. Toews has created three generations of unforgetable characters in Swiv, Grandma and Mom. A fast paced journey through every day life of a nine year old who may or may not be struggling with gender identity and their effervescent teacher Grandma, whose tales of life in behind the iron curtain have sparked an unending search for the joy in living. Mom heavily pregnant with baby "Gord" (gender unknown) does her best to keep sane. While Swiv pining for an absent father just tries to keep up. Five stars!

Prepare to be breathless hooooooooo. An ingenious, original, funny, heart-breaking account of life in a family of three generations of square-peg females. The narrator is nine years old but has the weight of the world on her shoulders as she worries about her grandmother and her pregnant mother and tries to hold it all together. She is writing to her absent father and her account of life and a trip from Canada to California with grandma made me laugh out loud and cry. What an original voice, I am missing her already.

After reading Women Talking I was looking forward to reading again from Miriam Toews and was not disappointed by this pretty short heart warming literary fiction novel .It follows our main character who is nine years old and lives with her mother and grandma in a really matriarchal maternal sort of family dynamic. All three of them are very very quirky.. Her mother is pregnant and they call the baby in her belly "the gourd". This book is very silly and weird in a fun way that I thought was very enjoyable..

Our main character is a bit of a badass and gets into fights at school which lead to her being expelled and she then gets home-schooled by her grandma and they create and run a newspaper together. while she and her mum are trying to take care of her ailing grandmother who is still very lively. feisty and funny. a

I think this book was just very sweet and charming and it also deals with things like grief and family and loss and growing up.. I found this a really sweet book. It was very very endearing and very much a lovely experience to read that's still incredibly heart breaking at points.

In 'Fight Night' by Miriam Toews, nine year old Swiv writes to her absent father about her life, her mum, unborn sibling (gord) and grandmother. Having escaped a fundamentalist religion, constantly approached to sell their home, lonely, and bullied/abused by others, there is much the small family has had to do to survive. Indeed at one point grandmother writes to gord "your a small thing...and you must learn to fight." However, despite this the family are full of love, wit and forgiveness for each other.

I have read and loved two of Miriam Toews' previous books and this one did not disappoint. It had me both laughing out loud and crying. Telling the story from Swiv's perspective works brilliantly and I loved her grandmother, who is redoubtable and brave. Initially the writing style takes a little bit of getting used to, but its worth persevering. I highly recommend people read this. Its a definite 5 star book for me.

Fight Night... this isn't a book I would normally read if I am honest but I was given the opportunity to read it via @netgalley and although it didn't blow me away I did read it and finish the story. Based upon three generations of one family, the book is narrated by the youngest member Swiv who is writing the story from a first person view of her life with her mom and Grandma. The grandmother in the story is very lovable and the feelings between Grandma and granddaughter comes through in the writing style. I struggled really with the general storyline and felt like I couldn't really get my teeth into this one but it was a pleasant read despite this. #netgalley #fightnight

I’m really sorry, but I just couldn’t get into this novel, although I know other readers will probably enjoy it- just not for me.

A compelling slice-of-life book from the perspective of Swiv, a young girl being forced to grow up too fast due to her challenging family situation. A big change from Miriam Toews' previous work WOMEN TALKING, but still an excellent exploration of gender, identity, and community relations.