Swiv’s grandfather and aunt died by suicide. In “Fight Night,” Toews returns to the subject within the context of a family living in Toronto: rambunctious Elvira her daughter, heavily pregnant (with a child she refers to as Gord) and Swiv, stuck at home after being suspended from school.

Her father and sister both took their own lives.

Toews’ 2014 novel “ All My Puny Sorrows” (recently adapted into a film) addresses mental illness and suicide, a topic the author is well acquainted with. Except for cops, whom she sprays with a garden hose when they step onto her lawn. “At some point in Grandma’s life someone must have threatened to kill her whole family unless she became friends with every single person she met,” Swiv thinks. Elvira likes to say “bombs away” as she drops her pills on the floor, laughs at inappropriate moments, wears a nail polish called Lady Balls and makes conversation with ICU nurses and passing teenagers alike.

But where Jansson’s story was leavened by vivid writing on the natural world, Toews’ is buoyed by a grandmother’s defiant sense of humor. It’s a slim tale of “lit moments, gleaming dark moments, like lights on a string,” as Ali Smith has written.ĭarkness lurks in “Fight Night” too. Her 1972 novel, “ The Summer Book,” centered on a 6-year-old and her grandmother on a Finnish island teeming with life, but tinged with death, shortly after the girl’s mother dies. Perhaps the best in this category is Tove Jansson. It’s a shame more writers don’t employ vibrant matriarchs in key roles. There are a number of colorful grandmothers in children’s books but a dearth of them in literary fiction. On the whole, it’s a touching tribute to the matrilineal bond among three women of different generations, emphasizing the ways in which joy (as Elvira tells her granddaughter Swiv, our 9-year-old narrator) can be a form of resistance. I was reminded of this while reading “ Fight Night,” the latest novel by Miriam Toews, which can veer from endearing to obvious to moving in a single chapter. But underneath Ted’s chipper demeanor, there’s trauma he’s working through, real meat in the script - including his father’s suicide.

After an exceptionally exhausting two years that felt more like two decades, people need to laugh and be reminded of what’s worth fighting for, even if the feeling comes candy-coated and delivered by a character who leans on one-liners like a soccer player with a shin splint. There’s a reason “ Ted Lasso” swept the Emmys this year. If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from, whose fees support independent bookstores.

Miriam toews novels