High-Water Mark
by Nicole Dixon
- Short-listed, CBC Bookie Awards
- Short-listed, ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year
- Short-listed, Margaret & John Savage First Book Award
- Winner, ForeWord Firsts Debut Fiction Award
Ten varied stories – many published in Canada's best literary journals – of contemporary women learning what they want from sex, love and partnership make up the debut collection from Bronwen Wallace Award–winner Nicole Dixon.
close this panelIn her short story collection, High-Water Mark, East Coast writer Nicole Dixon reflects an understanding of the human condition — especially how ridiculous we can be when confronted with the crazy dramas of our lives.
?[High-Water Mark is] a solid collection, even though the stories have been written over many years and a few have been published elsewhere.... They fit together well, and their diversity makes for an interesting read.?
'Dixon is uninterested in the kind of lyrical historical romance that was, for some time, the default CanLit setting. Her stories are abrasive and direct, marrying a fierce intelligence with a febrile style that refuses to shy away from profanity or explicit sex. There is a toughness to these stories that testifies to a refreshing honesty, a refusal on Dixon's part to paper over the more nettlesome aspects of her material, opting rather to face it head-on in all its painful messiness. High-Water Mark is kitchen-sink realism filtered through a storm-tossed East Coast sensibility. And it is chock full of allusiveness and implication.'
?In this fine collection of stories, characters often stumble upon what they?re actually looking for amid the flotsam and jetsam left by the receding dreams and washed-up hopes of not only their own lives, but all those around them.
?Winner of ForeWord's quarterly contest for debut fiction authors, Nicole Dixon's High-Water Mark takes on Alice Munro territory?not just in the geographical setting of Canada, but also in the thematic sense of secrets rattling around like something loose on a car. But with a little more kink. And more edge.?
?High-Water Mark is a collection of 10 stories.... They depict women and talk about relationships, sometimes with humour, sometimes with pathos.?
“The women in Dixon's stories speak in frank and unapologetic ways about conflicts in their lives.... In High-Water Mark, Dixon's women continuously question the options they are presented with, in work, relationships, sex.”
'[They] have humour and sadness.'
