Instructions for the Drowning

The literary world lost a considerable talent when award-winning Canadian writer Steven Heighton (The Shadow Boxerdied of cancer at age 60 in April 2022, but those who have enjoyed his work will appreciate that he has left behind Instructions for the Drowning: Stories, his third collectionIn these 11 expertly constructed and memorable short stories, he excels at capturing his subjects at moments of maximum stress, in the process illuminating different aspects of the human character.

Although there's no thematic unity to the entire collection, several stories focus on the relations between men and women. That's true of the title story, about an incident during a lake vacation which exposes the tension between a couple whose marriage is fraying over their inability to conceive. "Expecting" is the story of another couple, on the verge of the birth of their first child, whose discovery of a stranger's wallet sparks a crisis that brings to the fore the husband's "old assumption that at some point, under some unforeseeable, fatal pressure, the elaborate device of his persona would crack." In "Professions of Love," a skilled plastic surgeon who fancies himself the "deft, silver-haired Inverter of Time," wrestles with the ethics of operating on his aging wife when an unexpected opportunity to do so presents itself.

All the stories in Instructions for the Drowning reflect the same careful use of language and attention to efficient development of character. Barring a posthumous collection, this will be the final addition to Steven Heighton's body of short fiction, and it's one that will evoke gratitude amid the sadness over his premature passing. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer

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