Fight Night

Review 'Wickedly funny and fearlessly honest.' ― The New Yorker 'It is the funniest, most life-affirming and most virtuosic novel I expect to read this year. I doubt I'll read a better novel, full stop... Every sharply-turned sentence and passage of dialogue fizzes with invention, imparting the book a chaotic energy.' ― Big Issue 'A love letter to our brave and brilliant matriarchs.' ― Glamour 'An exuberant celebration of female resilience... Toews has so carefully rendered the fierce love between three stubborn, forceful women that the reader is willing to follow her to the tear-jerking finale. She has created a gem of a book, sharp edged and shining, a paean to the strength of women that posits humour and hope as a choice in the face of suffering' ― The Observer Fight Night is a headlong rush of a novel narrated by a precocious nine-year-old girl who is doing everything she can to keep her troubled mother from falling apart and her irrepressible grandmother alive. Tender, heart-wrenching, darkly funny, and ultimately joyful, this novel pulses with life. -- Christina Baker Kline In Fight Night as in her previous books, Miriam Toews is a genius. Her gigantic mind and heart are singular; her sentence-making powers, extraordinary. Living in a time when Toews is writing is a reason to rejoice. -- R. O. Kwon Sets standards for grandmotherly swearing and outspokenness I can never hope to match. Go Grandma Elvira! -- Margaret Atwood, via Twitter It's a knockout. ― Publishers Weekly, starred review 'Swiv's voice is the great achievement of this wonderfully original novel, allowing the story to move from the everyday to the picaresque to the tragic, while remaining effortlessly located in the unfolding life of a child. It's this voice that allows Toews to celebrate love between the generations without lapsing into sentimentality.' -- Lara Feigel ― The Spectator Fight Night is glorious: funny and sad and beautifully written. -- Sarah Moss 'The last book that made me cry.' -- Joshua Ferris 'This is a novel as compelling and hilarious and indecently sad as life can be.' ― Financial Times 'Fight Night is absurd, overwhelming, traumatic, touching - and totally delightful... It's a joy to read, and the colourful and beautifully drawn characters will stay with you long after you've finished.' ― NewsChain 'It will break your heart even as you hoot aloud.' ― Country & Town House 'Totally delightful... It deals with some big issues - such as suicide, alcoholism and depression - with realism, dark humour and a lightness of touch. It's a joy to read, and the colourful and beautifully drawn characters will stay with you long after you've finished.' ― Press Association Product Description 'I doubt I'll read a better novel.' Big Issue 'Go Grandma Elvira!' Margaret Atwood 'Wickedly funny and fearlessly honest.' The New Yorker 'Glorious.' Sarah Moss 'A love letter to our brave and brilliant matriarchs.' Glamour 'Miriam Toews is a genius.' R. O. Kwon 'As compelling and hilarious and indecently sad as life can be.' Financial Times ____________ You are a small thing, and you must learn to fight. Swiv has taken her grandmother's advice too literally. Now she's at home, suspended from school. Mom is pregnant and preoccupied - and so Swiv is in the older woman's charge, receiving a very different form of education from a teacher with a style all her own. Grandma likes her stories fast, troublesome and funny. She's known the very worst that life can throw at you - and has met it every time with a wild, unnamable spirit, fighting for joy and independence every step of the way. But will maths lessons based on Amish jigsaws and classes on How to Dig a Winter Grave inspire the same fire in Swiv, and ensure it never goes out? Time is running short. Grandma's health is failing, the baby is on the way, as a family of three extraordinary women prepare to face life's great changes together. Poignant, hilarious and deeply moving, Fight Night is a