Shelf Control: Fight Night, by Miriam Toews

Shelf Control is a feature where bloggers pick an unread book from our shelves and talk about it a little. It's supposed to be a Wednesday thing but I have French Movie Mercredi on Wednesdays already, so. Shelf Control is hosted at BookshelfFantasies.com.

 

Today's pick is Fight Night, by Miriam Toews.

From the publisher:

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.

 

 

 

How and when I got it:  

I bought a signed hardcover at the Strand bookstore in New York in October, 2021.

Why I Want to Read It:

I am a big fan of Toews from her books All My Puny Sorrows and Women Talking; I'll pretty much read anything she publishes at this point. All My Puny Sorrows is a novel about a woman negotiating her relationship with her talented and unfortunately suicidal sister; it's incredibly moving. Women Talking, soon to be a movie directed by Sarah Polley, is the haunting story of a series of rapes in a Mennonite community in South America.  I had stopped blogging at the time I read both books so I never reviewed them here but they are both unforgettable. I expect nothing less from Fight Night.