"Toews is a master of dialogue, swirling the adults' perspectives through Swiv's imperfect ventriloquism as if she were mixing paints." - New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice
"Ardent, hilarious, and moving." -
NPR.org "If the book's overwhelming tenderness makes the reader cry, they'll be, as Swiv's mother teaches her, 'tears of happiness.'" -
Nadja Spiegelman, New York Times "A touching tribute to the matrilineal bond among three women of different generations." -
Los Angeles Times "Toews will make you cheer and sob for all concerned." -
Boston Globe "Go Grandma Elvira!" -
Margaret Atwood via Twitter "The last book that made me cry. It took only a line or two to be reminded of why I read fiction and why I write it. Toews doesn't simply narrate a story; she fashions a world." -
Joshua Ferris, The Guardian "A big-hearted, briskly paced family saga about the extraordinary love that binds three generations of free-spirited women together, and the tools and techniques that they've had to develop to survive." -
USA Today, Best Books of the Year "You wouldn't think it's possible to write a book about a family grappling with the legacy of mental illness that's also hilarious. But Miriam is such a beautiful and funny writer. She really locates the comedy in difficult life situations. I recommend it [Fight Night] so highly." -
Rumaan Alam on NBC-TV TODAY, "What to Read" "I laughed and cried reading this book; I can't think of a higher endorsement." -
BuzzFeed, "Best Books of the Year" "Toews can always see the light through the darkness, and with grace and tenderness and humor, tells how to live with it, really live." -
Literary Hub, "Favorite Books of the Year "A love letter to our brave and brilliant matriarchs." -
Glamour "A novel as moving as it is full of humor . . . As Susan Cole, in Now Magazine, says, 'Few authors mix humor and deep emotion with Toews's skill.'" -
The Millions, "Most Anticipated" "Miriam Toews [is] a master of the novel. Every book of hers is magic. This one's magic is terrifying, perhaps even more than others, but it's compelling and inescapable, demanding to be read." -
New York Journal of Books "Nobody writes books like Miriam Toews–you feel her characters down to the bone, and she can straddle the horrific to the humorous across a single sentence. Fight Night is a hymn to women fighting for themselves and their families." -
New York Public Library "Staff Pick" "Beguiling . . . [A] wonderful tragi-comic work of fiction." -
National Book Review "Gorgeous . . . Strong, vibrant matriarchs are hard enough to come by in literature. Even more so, when they are dynamic, hilarious, kind. [Fight Night] is a master class in confronting the darker corners of reality with acceptance and a view toward the future and toward expectation of joy." -
Feminist Book Club podcast "Fight Night brings it. Every corner of human emotion is nudged, awakened, revealed . . . This novel is a reminder of the full potential of a book to connect us to our humanity and to inspire us to fight another day." -
The Southern Bookseller Review "Fierce and funny, this gives undeniable testimony to the life force of family . . . a knockout." -
Publishers Weekly, starred review "[A] charming, open-hearted book . . . Funny and sad and exquisitely tender." -
Kirkus Reviews, starred review, Best Fiction of the Year "Brilliant . . . Toews gives Swiv a voice that is sophisticated, childlike and utterly believable. . . . the wonder of Fight Night is that it's a warmhearted and inventive portrait of women who have learned to fight against adversity." -
BookPage, starred review "Women Talking author Toews is at the top of her game in this novel . . . [It's] fierce and funny, and gives undeniable testimony to the life force of family." -
Publishers Weekly, Holiday Gift Guide "[A] tightknit, funny, ferocious trio . . . This novel, with its stream-of-consciousness style, unfiltered raucous humor, and hard-won wisdom is the kind of reading that makes me evangelical. I adored the girl and the women in Fight Night and am grateful to Miriam Toews to bringing them so beautifully to life." -
Gilmore Guide to Books "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, author of THE INCENDIARIES "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, bestselling author of THE EXILES and ORPHAN TRAIN "Miriam Toews is wickedly funny and fearlessly honest . . . She is an artist of escape; she always finds a way for her characters, trapped by circumstance, to liberate themselves." -
The New Yorker "I read in one sitting, it was that good." -
Sarah Polley
