Why a 9-year-old girl narrates Miriam Toews's new novel, Fight Night.Read an excerpt and see the cover for Miriam Toews's new novel Fight Night.65 Canadian works of fiction to watch for in fall 2021.29 Canadian books we can't wait to read in August.100 writers in Canada you need to know now.The top 10 bestselling Canadian books of 2018.Miriam Toews: 5 books that changed my life.Miriam Toews on the war she didn't know she was winning.The top 10 bestselling Canadian books of 2021.Her novel All My Puny Sorrowswon the 2014 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for the 2014 Scotiabank Giller Prize. In 2000, she wrote a memoir called Swing Low. Her 2018 novel, Women Talking, was a finalist for the 2018 Governor General's Literary Award for fiction. Miriam Toews is the author of A Complicated Kindness, which received the Governor General's Literary Award for English-language fiction in 2004 and won Canada Reads in 2006, championed by John K. To read this examination of girlhood, family and mental wellness, is to become wholly enamoured with a cast of characters consistently demonstrating the power of exuberance and resiliency of love.' The emotional range exemplified on every page solidifies Toews as one of our most endearing, compassionate and prolific storytellers. Her young protagonist, nine year old Swiv, is expertly rendered with exacting grit and enviable humour. The emotional range exemplified on every page solidifies Toews as one of our most endearing, compassionate and prolific storytellers. Scotiabank Giller Prize jury citation: 'Miriam Toews' compellingly crafted Fight Night is a testament to her astounding grasp of narrative voice. (From Knopf Canada)įight Night was on the shortlist for the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the 2021 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. 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. '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.

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). When Swiv is expelled from school, 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. 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.

Miriam toews books