Going Down Swinging

“Going Down Swinging is one smart bomb of a tale, detonating and reconstructing one family’s hell-on-wheels attempt to choose love over self-destruction. Livingston yokes her stinging, stylish wit to a luminous empathy for human frailty in this shout-out story of mothers and daughters.” —Elise Levine, author of Driving Men Mad

“Livingston pulls off the difficult literary task of serving up poignancy without sentimentality in Eilleen and Grace, two characters so vivid they keep splashing in the brain long after the last page is turned.” — Anne Fleming, author of the Governor General’s Award nominee Pool-Hopping and Other Stories

“Going Down Swinging is a moving first book, and Livingston a compelling new voice—one that should be welcomed and watched.” —The Globe and Mail

“[This] first-time novelist reveals an unflinching eye and a formidable grasp of the mysteries of the human heart.” —The Vancouver Sun

“Livingston succeeds gorgeously in capturing the messiness and unresolvable ambiguities of familial love. Her lovingly drawn, half-crazy characters always transcend a caseworker’s clichés.” —National Post

“Intelligent and touching—Livingston resists easy sentimentality at every turn.” —Toronto Star

“Livingston’s characters are scrappers. They’re canny and sharp and share a dark streak of humour that comes from the love of family and the communal understanding of knowing who is the enemy.” — The New Brunswick Reader

“Eilleen and Grace—from whose points of view the story is alternately told—are small fictional masterpieces.” —Vancouver Courier

“An absorbing tale of growing up disadvantaged with an alcoholic mother and an absent father, the novel is no coming-of-age weeper.” —The Toronto Star

“Livingston’s book is a humane, political look at the world of hard knocks . . . we discover there are no happy endings, just the possibility of fresh beginnings.” —New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal

“Billie Livingston vividly captures the heady romance of mother-daughter love, so strengthening in its unconditional acceptance and support, and so wretchedly debilitating in its blindness.” —Hamilton Spectator