Why a 9-year-old girl narrates Miriam Toews's new novel, Fight Night
Miriam Toews's new novel, Fight Night, takes the form of a nine-year-old's letter to her absent father. Suspended from school for fighting, Swiv keeps a detailed record of life at home — from her irrepressible, sports fan grandmother, Elvira, who takes on the role of homeschool teacher, to her pregnant mother's fight for her mental health.
Swiv's entries explore the crushing impact of mental illness, the patriarchal attitudes embedded in fundamentalist religion and above all, the strength and resilience that come from close family bonds.
Fight Night is Toews's eighth novel and is shortlisted for both the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the 2021 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Prize for Fiction.
Her past work has won the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction and the Writers Trust Fiction Prize. Her third novel, A Complicated Kindness won Canada Reads in 2006.
Toews spoke with Shelagh Rogers at a live event about writing Fight Night.
Grandma is just a phenomenal character, and she shares a name with your mother, Elvira. Does she share more than a name, Miriam?
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, the character of Elvira in the book is written from the point of view of Swiv, who's nine years old and she's a specific kind of nine-year-old, but also a typical nine-year-old. So when she is writing about Elvira, there's comic exaggeration, a larger-than-life element to it.
My mom is the most resilient person I've ever known. It's phenomenal to me and to the rest of the family and friends. Certainly she is the person in our family that we are comforted by, that we look to for guidance, for wisdom, for great hilarity. If there was one word that I could use to describe her, "resilient" would be it. Absolutely.
Swiv's a very particular kind of nine year old. Why did you make her nine and not seven or 11?
I remember being eight. I was a very carefree, happy-go-lucky, playful eight-year-old. Then I turned nine and something happened ... like a switch went off in my head. I thought, "Really? What the hell is going on here? What the hell is going on here with my family, with my town, with the world, with me?" It was an entry into the story. I thought, "Oh, that's a good base to to tell the story from and through Swiv's eyes."
And nine is still a very innocent time.
Yeah, it is — and it isn't. Adolescent characters, too, they're on this cusp between innocence and real wisdom. That always has been an interesting place to tell a story from.
I love the way Swiv speaks. I mean, she uses words like "cahoots" and expressions like "necessary evil" and "nesting instinct." How did her voice come to you?
She's imitating her grandmother. She's imitating her mother. She's using words that she's heard from them. For me, the language, I don't know how to explain it. It's everything. It is, in a sense, just becoming a nine year old again. It was a big challenge to get that voice right.
What is the fight of Fight Night?
The fight is the fight to live, the fight for happiness, the fight for connection with human beings, the fight against loneliness, against alienation.
The fight is the fight to live, the fight for happiness, the fight for connection with human beings, the fight against loneliness, against alienation.- Miriam Toews
There are the other fights. We can fight authority and climate change and fascism and the Taliban. But in this case, the fight is to be able to go into your heart and to love and to experience joy, to spread joy. And that's not always easy.
Swiv's mom is a fighter on every front. She's worried about losing her mind. She says if she wasn't fighting, she's dying. And I felt they were fighting out of love and and also to push death away.
To push death away, to fight against that — that's what I think writing is. Other people have said it better than me. It's that fight against death, getting up every day, the fight for mental health, for wellness. It was funny because with the title, a lot of people thought, "Fight Night? That sounds harsh." But it made such sense to have the word "night" in there as well, as the connotation of the end of fighting. Is that the end of life, when we stop fighting, stop raging against the dying? I don't know. I think there are many ways of thinking about it for me personally and in our family, people who have experienced this kind of mental illness, that kind of darkness, that kind of deep, profound psychic pain, I think it is a fight every day just to live and to find joy.
Is that the end of life, when we stop fighting, stop raging against the dying?- Miriam Toews
I remember Timothy Findley. I thought it was a kind of a goofy question at the time, but I asked him, "Why do you write?" And he said, "Against despair." That was his answer. What is your answer, why do you write?
I think I would have the same answer: against despair, against an overwhelming cacophony, mental cacophony, something to create a world that makes sense to me in fiction and narrative. But also, the necessity and the joy of using language, of putting words together in a sentence and then a paragraph and then a page. It's the best feeling in the world. It's God is in the language and for me, for a writer.
Swiv sees herself as her grandmother's caregiver and feels responsible for keeping her alive. But grandma takes care of her and calms her down when she's overwhelmed with anxiety, with questions about the world. How do you view their relationship?
Elvira and Swiv, I mean there's a worldview that they share. One is wisdom and experience and the other is a kind of openness and take on the world, which is so beautifully refreshing and honest. They complement each other, but they're absolutely taking care of each other. Swiv is doing all sorts of things for grandma, who has problems doing different things, sometimes showering or clipping her nails or moving.
Without the truth, things are a lot more terrifying than they need to be.- Miriam Toews
Grandma, of course, is taking care of Swiv. Trying to console her, trying to show her the world and that the world is a place where she belongs and that she can survive, trying to explain what's going on with her and Swiv's Mom. Trying to tell Swiv the truth. I feel that for kids — and for all of us — without the truth, things are a lot more terrifying than they need to be. So grandma is there for that.
What is the mom up against?
She's up against a lot of stuff. Swiv's father has left and she doesn't know where he is. She's filled with hurt and rage and fear. She's an actor. She's not getting roles. She's a woman of a certain age, and she is attempting to take care of her mother, to raise her kid and to have this baby late in life. She's up against a lot. She lives with this deep, deep fear of losing her mind, of going crazy. When I was thinking about this book, I thought of it as a compendium of fights, but often it also came to me as a child's guide to death and madness. Swiv's mom's sister and father ... took their own lives, suffered deeply. She's haunted by that possible inheritance, hereditary madness. That's one of her many fights.
She's haunted by that possible inheritance, hereditary madness.- Miriam Toews
Swiv's mom is also trying to shed this the background of patriarchal violence that she experienced as a kid growing up in that community. I don't mean necessarily physical only, but just that violence to the soul and to one's self. So there's just a ton of stuff that she's up against.
I'm going to go to the audience. This question is from Judy P., who says, "Hello, Miriam, do you feel there's a connection to the women in Fight Night to the women in Women Talking?"
When I was writing Fight Night and after I'd finished writing it, it hadn't occurred to me. After the intensity of having written Women Talking, an experience that was painful and all-consuming, I needed to move into a different kind of thing. My editor was saying, "It makes absolute sense that this would be the book to follow Women Talking."
So in a sense, you can think of the women in Women Talking, going through some kind of journey and ending up — this sounds a little hokey because it's such a literal interpretation of that question — ending up in some place in Toronto as an actor and a revolutionary spirit grandmother. There's obviously a wide gulf between Women Talking and that reality and the reality of the women in Fight Night. But I mean, certainly generations of women living together, fighting, loving each other, the conflicts and the attempt to free themselves, to become themselves and not the people that they've been trained and pressured and coerced into being.
LISTEN | Miriam Toews discusses her novel Women Talking:
I think that has something to do with bioluminescence. Grandma is teaching Swiv about bioluminescence and it's that ability to be lit from within. Grandma says to Swiv, "Your job is to keep that light going to not let it go out." I think that "bioluminescence" is such a beautiful word, and I never really thought about it kind of as a philosophy.
Yeah. That fire, that fire inside, like fireflies and types of ostracods.
That was another thing that my own mother had told me many, many times over the years: about a fire inside and you got to keep it burning. You got a fire inside. She was told the same thing by my father, by her friends, by the people who loved her. There's a spark there, and we have to be conscious of that.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
