Miriam Toews is one of my favourite writers whose books I always look forward to reading. She is a Canadian author and many of her novels focus on Mennonites, as Toews herself was raised in a Mennonite community in Manitoba. Fundamentalist Mennonites do not come across very well in Toews’ novels. It seems like a very oppressive belief system that focuses too much on sin and damnation, rather than the teaches of Jesus, who said that God’s greatest commandment is to love God and to love each other. Although, I do not believe this is unique to Mennonites. Fight Night is not set within a Mennonite community, like Toews’ A Complicated Kindness (a great book that still lingers in my mind many years after I read it), Irma Voth and Women Talking (which is based on the disgusting real life events of women in a Mennonite community being drugged at night and waking up to find that they have been sexually assaulted, and then gaslighted by the men of their community who said that they must be imagining things). The characters in Fight Night no longer live in a Mennonite community, but their experiences within the community still inform their lives.

Fight Night is told from the perspective of a girl named Swiv. I do not think her age is explicitly stated, but I would say Swiv is probably eight to ten years old. Swiv is a sassy/bratty kid who has been expelled from school for fighting. She lives with her pregnant mother, who suffers from mental health issues, her Grandma, Elvira (named after Toews’ own mother), who is the most entertaining character I have read about it ages, and Swiv’s unborn sibling who has been nicknamed “Gord”.

The novel is narrated by Swiv as a letter to her absent father, a task given to her by Grandma, who has taken over teaching Swiv after her expulsion from school. Swiv’s narration is hilarious and exactly what I would expect from an intelligent kid her age. She is exasperated with having to take care of her mother and her grandmother, but you can tell that she does it because she loves them, she is concerned for Gord and wants to make sure that he or she has a good life, and she is disgusted by sex talk, which her mother and Grandma exploit to their amusement.

But most of the hilarity in Fight Night comes from Grandma who has health issues, but wants to live her life to the fullest, so she literally gives zero fucks about anything. She is one of those older women that can makes friends with anyone and who is always making inappropriate jokes. But her heart is in a good place, and Swiv, and the reader, learns that Grandma’s philosophy in life comes from living in an oppressive Mennonite community that led to the suicides of both her husband and one of her daughters (Toews’ own father and older sister both committed suicide; Toews wrote about her father’s experience with bipolar disorder that lead to his death in Swing Low and she wrote about her experiences with her sister just before she committed suicide in All My Puny Sorrows). Grandma believes that we need love and we need to experience joy, which is what they were not experiencing in their Mennonite community.

The plot of Fight Night is quite simple: Grandma decides she wants to go to Fresno to see her nephews one last time, and Swiv’s mother decides that Swiv should go with her because Grandma is not so good at taking care of herself. It is a chaotic, anxiety-inducing trip that ends in both tragedy and joy. But the focus of Fight Night is on the characters, these three generations of women who have all suffered, but who have come out stronger for it, led by Grandma’s beliefs.

Fight Night reads a bit differently from the rest of Toews’ novels, but I enjoyed it so much and found myself snort-laughing out loud at times. Even if you have not read any of Toews’ novels before, I would recommend giving this one a chance.