Fight Night by Miriam Toews review – a paean to the strength of women | fiction
MIriam Toews's fiction always puts me in mind of the paintings of Agnes Martin: both artists use repeating patterns, creating distinct pieces from variations on the same basic elements. For Toews, the motifs that are reworked through all her books of her are largely autobiographical. She draws on her cultural background of her – growing up in a strict Mennonite community in rural Canada – as well as her family history of her: both her father and her sister of her killed themselves after long battles with mental illness. While these recurring themes are threaded through her eighth novel de ella, fight nightthe tone is markedly different from that of its predecessor, Women Talking. That book fictionalized a historic case of sexual assault in a Bolivian Mennonite village, where multipl...