Fight Night
Ratings11
Average rating4.1
15
Ratings11
Average rating4.1
"Move over, Scout Finch! There’s a new contender for feistiest girl in fiction, and her name is Swiv." -USA Today, "Best Books of the Year" "Toews is a master of dialogue." -New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice "A revelation." -Richard Russo NPR Best Books of the Year * Shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize * Writers' Trust Fiction Prize Finalist * Indie Next Pick * Amazon Editors' Pick * Apple Book of the Month From the bestselling author of Women Talking and All My Puny Sorrows, a compassionate, darkly humorous, and deeply wise 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.
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I don't get it. Or, maybe a little, but it just made me sad. Three generations of mental disease, like a case study in neuroses compounded by underdeveloped prefrontal cortices: Swiv, the narrator, a hyperprecocious and ultra-hyper-anxious nine-year-old; Mom (not much of one), a learned-helplessness pity party who mostly just ignores Swiv; and Grandma, who I guess is supposed to be the Live Your Life To The Fullest influence, a happy-go-lucky free spirit—except she requires pretty much constant caretaking by Swiv, the only responsible one in the bunch.
Everything looms large to Swiv: who, at age nine, has any perspective? Who understands what matters? So to her everything is a Big Deal, every little issue a reinforcement of her anxiety... and there are lots of little issues. Grandma just laughs everything off, maybe trying to set an example for Swiv that there is joy in life, but in practice just adding to Swiv's workload and stress. Then, at the end (this is not a spoiler), a new baby for Mom to ignore and for Swiv to caretake.
The humor eludes me. The rat-a-tat stream-of-consciousness narration, with no pauses for breath, was almost too effective in conveying anxiety: it just made me feel hopeless.
Unrated, because once again I'm not the target audience. [Two for two in 2022. I wonder if I can go a whole year without assigning a rating?]
