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Instructions for the Drowning
“To say Heighton is an immensely talented writer is true enough but insufficient ... As good a writer as Canada has ever produced.”
— National Post The unforgettable last collection by the bestselling author of The Shadow Boxer A man recalls his father's advice on how to save a drowning person, but struggles when the time comes to use it. A wife’s good deed leaves a couple vulnerable at the moment when they’re most in need of security—the birth of their first child. Newly in love, a man preoccupied by accounts of freak accidents is befallen by one himself. In stories about love and fear, idealisms and illusions, failures of muscle and mind and all the ways we try to care for one another, Steven Heighton’s Instructions for the Drowning is an indelible last collection by a writer working at the height of his powers.
— National Post The unforgettable last collection by the bestselling author of The Shadow Boxer A man recalls his father's advice on how to save a drowning person, but struggles when the time comes to use it. A wife’s good deed leaves a couple vulnerable at the moment when they’re most in need of security—the birth of their first child. Newly in love, a man preoccupied by accounts of freak accidents is befallen by one himself. In stories about love and fear, idealisms and illusions, failures of muscle and mind and all the ways we try to care for one another, Steven Heighton’s Instructions for the Drowning is an indelible last collection by a writer working at the height of his powers.
240 pages, Paperback
Published April 18, 2023
41 people are currently reading
520 people want to read
About the author
Steven Heighton
39 books74 followersSteven Heighton (born August 14, 1961) is a Canadian novelist, short story writer and poet. He is the author of ten books, including two short story collections, three novels, and five poetry collections.[1] His most recent novel, Every Lost Country, was published in 2010.
Heighton was born in Toronto, Ontario, and earned a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degree, at Queens University.[2]
Heighton's most recent books are the novel Every Lost Country (May 2010) [3] and the poetry collection Patient Frame (April 2010).[4]
Heighton is also the author of the novel Afterlands (2006),which appeared in six countries.[5] The book has recently been optioned for film. Steven Heighton's debut novel, The Shadow Boxer (2001), a story about a young poet-boxer and his struggles growing up, also appeared in five countries.[6]
His work has been translated into ten languages and widely anthologised.[7] His books have been nominated for the Governor General’s Award, the Trillium Award, the Journey Prize, a Pushcart Prize, and Britain’s W.H. Smith Award (best book of the year).[8] He has received the Gerald Lampert Award, gold medals for fiction and for poetry in the National Magazine Awards, the Air Canada Award, and the 2002 Petra Kenney Prize. Flight Paths of the Emperor has been listed at Amazon.ca as one of the ten best Canadian short story collections.[9]
Heighton has been the writer-in-residence at McArthur College, Queen's University and The University of Ottawa.[10] He has also participated in several workshops including the Summer Literary Seminars, poetry work shop, in St. Petersburg, Russia (2007), and the Writing with Style, short fiction workshop, in Banff, Alberta (2007).[11]
Heighton currently lives in Kingston, Ontario with his family.[12]
Heighton was born in Toronto, Ontario, and earned a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degree, at Queens University.[2]
Heighton's most recent books are the novel Every Lost Country (May 2010) [3] and the poetry collection Patient Frame (April 2010).[4]
Heighton is also the author of the novel Afterlands (2006),which appeared in six countries.[5] The book has recently been optioned for film. Steven Heighton's debut novel, The Shadow Boxer (2001), a story about a young poet-boxer and his struggles growing up, also appeared in five countries.[6]
His work has been translated into ten languages and widely anthologised.[7] His books have been nominated for the Governor General’s Award, the Trillium Award, the Journey Prize, a Pushcart Prize, and Britain’s W.H. Smith Award (best book of the year).[8] He has received the Gerald Lampert Award, gold medals for fiction and for poetry in the National Magazine Awards, the Air Canada Award, and the 2002 Petra Kenney Prize. Flight Paths of the Emperor has been listed at Amazon.ca as one of the ten best Canadian short story collections.[9]
Heighton has been the writer-in-residence at McArthur College, Queen's University and The University of Ottawa.[10] He has also participated in several workshops including the Summer Literary Seminars, poetry work shop, in St. Petersburg, Russia (2007), and the Writing with Style, short fiction workshop, in Banff, Alberta (2007).[11]
Heighton currently lives in Kingston, Ontario with his family.[12]
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews
May 15, 2023
Stories as powerful as they are poignant, given the untimely death of such a great writer, sorely missed. On the last two pages, the narrator as “I” appears for the first time, in the midst of prayer flags fluttering down a Nepali mountain: “They were charting the wind’s convoluted patterns… I was walking on blessings.” And the book ends, astonishingly, with the blessing, “Namaste”. Namaste, Steven, wherever you are, in these stories and out, beyond words: “’I salute the godhead within you’”.
June 19, 2023
Beautifully written and full of emotion; these detailed stories remind us that deep down what we may not want to face is what makes us truly human.
April 30, 2024
Exceptional. These stories are intimate, tender, and infinitely human. Heighton writes with superb precision and elegance. It’s astonishing what he is able to do in such a short span. Truly masterful.
July 23, 2024
A very uneven story collection. Some good stories, but no perfect ones, near the end, and some pretty bad ones near the beginning.
Liked the last story Stages of Gordon J. Whitehead and the plastic surgeon one and the AIDS one.
Liked the last story Stages of Gordon J. Whitehead and the plastic surgeon one and the AIDS one.
December 20, 2023
Instructions for the Drowning is a selection of short stories released posthumously after the death last year of Canadian poet, writer and musician, Steven Heighton.
There are eleven stories in the book, all of which are explorations of the human conditions of loss, love, expectation, angst and death, fear and delusion, and failure. These stories are brilliantly written by a talent gone too soon.
Stories such as these are not lightly read and will be staying with me for some time.
There are eleven stories in the book, all of which are explorations of the human conditions of loss, love, expectation, angst and death, fear and delusion, and failure. These stories are brilliantly written by a talent gone too soon.
Stories such as these are not lightly read and will be staying with me for some time.
April 19, 2023
I really loved these stories. Heighton hones in on certain moments that change his characters’ lives. Some of the moments are huge, some are small. And he leaves other moments for the reader to imagine. Spaces to imagine hope or threat or love or regret.
July 3, 2023
The typical short story collection, with my typical reaction: a default middle rating of 3 stars, based on a range of stories ranging from the razor sharp & compelling (Who Now Lies Sleeping) to the left-a-complete-blank-on-my-consciousness (Expecting). A bit of something for every reader here.
November 23, 2025
These are powerful short stories. I am still thinking about some of them. They have such atmosphere and evoke uncomfortable feelings. Yesterday, the title story revealed itself to me in new ways. "Professions of Love" is so creepy - about a guy with a god complex plus the skills and audacity to act on it. (However this was also the story that is most far fetched from reality.) In a number of stories, there is the disturbing notion that people, without much thought, can get into unexpected difficult situations. Stories to re-read: "Instructions for the Drowning," "Repeat to Failure", "Expecting", "Professions of Love", "Who Now Lies Sleeping" - pretty much all of them! Steven Heighton was quite a writer, gone too soon, but he left some incredible works. This was a great book club book - I got more insights by discussing it with my fellow readers.
January 1, 2024
Tight, even group of short stories. All remarkably nuanced and discomfiting in their prodding of characters’ narrativisations. My favourites, at least in the moment, were ‘Everything Turns Away’ and ‘Notes Towards a New Theory of Tears’.
August 19, 2023
Confusing but kind of cool?
August 14, 2024
3.5
inchresting
finished on the longest 3 ride ever
inchresting
finished on the longest 3 ride ever
October 13, 2023
i think i must accept that i am not really a short story person. each of these stories was well-crafted, and heighton was clearly a deeply talented individual, but unfortunately nothing really hooked me.
July 10, 2023
Ray’s father once told him that if you ever jumped into the water to help a drowning man, he would try to pull you down with him and there was only one way to save yourself and him as well. Drowning men were men possessed and they were supernaturally strong. But they were also as weak as babies, seeing as they had lost all self-control. His father shook his head, his lips clamped thin, as if such a loss were the most pitiful any man might suffer. You could neither wrestle nor reason with a man in that condition, he explained. In a sense, he was hardly human anymore. Ray—ten or eleven years old—had pictured the victim metamorphosing into a kind of ghoul, sinewy and slippery as the Gollum he had been imagining while reading The
September is the Monday of months, the world lurching back into gear; a month of heavy lifting by bodies and minds summer-spoiled and rusty.
He promised himself he would stop at five reps, even four, instead of going for the full six. After all, who was watching?—aside from the usual internalized tribunal of judgers and scoffers, going back to early childhood. Tia had somehow exorcised that panel of phantoms, while he had simply learned to accept its presence, even to employ it for motivation. You could do worse, he reckoned. Tia sincerely believed that people could change; Rasmus was having none of it. You simply learned to work well with what you had. Which maybe amounted to the same thing.
Looping upward, it gave views back toward the Aegean, tropically turquoise this morning and yet, as we all knew by now, cold enough to kill.
But he might check for messages once he figures out he’s lost his wallet and passport.” “I would.” “I know you would, sweetheart.” She said the words fondly enough, but then again, the line between settled affection and love’s erosion in habit and predictability—was it not a fine one?
I have always been an untroubled sleeper: though not at this moment particularly. Bafflement, I believe, trudges up that path alongside grief. In a sense I did act contrary to her wishes, but my motives were benign. I went against her wishes in the way that a man may go against a wife’s wishes in arranging, say, a surprise party on her behalf when what she wants for her birthday, she has said, is to go out with him to their favourite, say, Greek seafood restaurant. Duly promising to take her to Molivos, secretly he ploys to “deny” her wish. The party is a gift that supersedes his promise while surpassing her wish! His motives are the motives of generosity, love! If he is especially thoughtful, he will have the party catered by Molivos. She is four years older than I. A beautiful woman aging, on the whole, less well than she might be aging, and in that expedited fashion of a woman after her change of life.
For years, whenever my small-hours mind affirmed something blatant but unacceptable, I could argue it into submission, a professional knack, a necessity, a lawyer opts not to know certain truths about his clients, even case-weathered pros would recoil with disgust if they admitted to themselves that said client really had gone a few roadhouse rye-and-cokes too far that November afternoon before getting behind the wheel, and I got the son of a bitch off, a family of five dead in a compact sedan on a Madawaska back road during a snowstorm, emergency crews unable to get through for hours, client huddled in the cab of his totalled four-by-four sobering up and settling on a tale.
His father insisted on going first, which had the effect of deepening the path and making Niko’s passage a bit less arduous. Probably he would have preferred to keep pushing the boy, who’d steadily gained weight this last year. Niko had felt helpless in the face of that change, a mere bystander. Yet for all its debility, his body seemed to retain a stubborn will of its own, one that kept defying his father’s hopes and nature’s hormonal trajectory.
If sleep is designed not just for rest but also as a restorative break from pain—a sanctuary from suffering—it’s pitifully ineffective. The doctor’s theme, the subject of the book now hibernating in his hard drive, is that human history can be viewed as one long, ever-evolving quest for anaesthesia. Ultimately all of our activities, from falling in love, to praying in church, to going to war, are actuated by personal suffering and our wish to avoid or transcend it. Civilization, then, is the epic story not of our striving toward higher consciousness but of our efforts to escape it—into sedation, oblivion, the waters of Lethe. Various herbs, mushrooms, wormwood, alcohol, hashish, opiates natural and synthetic, ketamine, ayahuasca and mescaline, barbiturates, benzodiazepines, SSRIs, the endorphins of exercise, the oxytocin of sex, ad hoc agents such as Lysol, Listerine, Sterno, glue, lighter fluid, rubbing alcohol and aftershave . . . Humanity has never stopped seeking quick chemical escapes from sadness, from stress, from insecurity and from pain, which is to say from HISTORY, our own personal history or the larger one around us
September is the Monday of months, the world lurching back into gear; a month of heavy lifting by bodies and minds summer-spoiled and rusty.
He promised himself he would stop at five reps, even four, instead of going for the full six. After all, who was watching?—aside from the usual internalized tribunal of judgers and scoffers, going back to early childhood. Tia had somehow exorcised that panel of phantoms, while he had simply learned to accept its presence, even to employ it for motivation. You could do worse, he reckoned. Tia sincerely believed that people could change; Rasmus was having none of it. You simply learned to work well with what you had. Which maybe amounted to the same thing.
Looping upward, it gave views back toward the Aegean, tropically turquoise this morning and yet, as we all knew by now, cold enough to kill.
But he might check for messages once he figures out he’s lost his wallet and passport.” “I would.” “I know you would, sweetheart.” She said the words fondly enough, but then again, the line between settled affection and love’s erosion in habit and predictability—was it not a fine one?
I have always been an untroubled sleeper: though not at this moment particularly. Bafflement, I believe, trudges up that path alongside grief. In a sense I did act contrary to her wishes, but my motives were benign. I went against her wishes in the way that a man may go against a wife’s wishes in arranging, say, a surprise party on her behalf when what she wants for her birthday, she has said, is to go out with him to their favourite, say, Greek seafood restaurant. Duly promising to take her to Molivos, secretly he ploys to “deny” her wish. The party is a gift that supersedes his promise while surpassing her wish! His motives are the motives of generosity, love! If he is especially thoughtful, he will have the party catered by Molivos. She is four years older than I. A beautiful woman aging, on the whole, less well than she might be aging, and in that expedited fashion of a woman after her change of life.
For years, whenever my small-hours mind affirmed something blatant but unacceptable, I could argue it into submission, a professional knack, a necessity, a lawyer opts not to know certain truths about his clients, even case-weathered pros would recoil with disgust if they admitted to themselves that said client really had gone a few roadhouse rye-and-cokes too far that November afternoon before getting behind the wheel, and I got the son of a bitch off, a family of five dead in a compact sedan on a Madawaska back road during a snowstorm, emergency crews unable to get through for hours, client huddled in the cab of his totalled four-by-four sobering up and settling on a tale.
His father insisted on going first, which had the effect of deepening the path and making Niko’s passage a bit less arduous. Probably he would have preferred to keep pushing the boy, who’d steadily gained weight this last year. Niko had felt helpless in the face of that change, a mere bystander. Yet for all its debility, his body seemed to retain a stubborn will of its own, one that kept defying his father’s hopes and nature’s hormonal trajectory.
If sleep is designed not just for rest but also as a restorative break from pain—a sanctuary from suffering—it’s pitifully ineffective. The doctor’s theme, the subject of the book now hibernating in his hard drive, is that human history can be viewed as one long, ever-evolving quest for anaesthesia. Ultimately all of our activities, from falling in love, to praying in church, to going to war, are actuated by personal suffering and our wish to avoid or transcend it. Civilization, then, is the epic story not of our striving toward higher consciousness but of our efforts to escape it—into sedation, oblivion, the waters of Lethe. Various herbs, mushrooms, wormwood, alcohol, hashish, opiates natural and synthetic, ketamine, ayahuasca and mescaline, barbiturates, benzodiazepines, SSRIs, the endorphins of exercise, the oxytocin of sex, ad hoc agents such as Lysol, Listerine, Sterno, glue, lighter fluid, rubbing alcohol and aftershave . . . Humanity has never stopped seeking quick chemical escapes from sadness, from stress, from insecurity and from pain, which is to say from HISTORY, our own personal history or the larger one around us
January 10, 2024
As always in a short-story collection, I liked some of these stories better than others. Several of them were absolutely perfect, in my opinion. I like fiction that develops characters and tells a pretty straightforward story about them. And I LOVE fiction in which the straightforward story is just the representation of a more interesting, somewhat hidden story. Several of the stories in this collection met that higher standard for me.
In the title story, a man must try to save his wife from drowning when she gets a random cramp at just the wrong moment. And his discovers that what his father told him long ago was true: that when you try to save a potential drowning victim, in their panic they will often try to drag you down with them.
Another story I loved was about a recently-divorced man who comes close to death when he becomes trapped under a weight at the gym and nobody notices.
As you can guess just from those two examples, the stakes are high in most of the stories in this collection. Yet they are told in a fairly quiet, matter-of-fact style which, in a weird way, made them more believable and real to me.
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Author of The Saint's Mistress
In the title story, a man must try to save his wife from drowning when she gets a random cramp at just the wrong moment. And his discovers that what his father told him long ago was true: that when you try to save a potential drowning victim, in their panic they will often try to drag you down with them.
Another story I loved was about a recently-divorced man who comes close to death when he becomes trapped under a weight at the gym and nobody notices.
As you can guess just from those two examples, the stakes are high in most of the stories in this collection. Yet they are told in a fairly quiet, matter-of-fact style which, in a weird way, made them more believable and real to me.
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Author of The Saint's Mistress
October 26, 2023
I don't remember buying Heighton's book. I must have read a review and something in it must have struck my fancy. It was in my current "to read" pile, not one of the many moldering old "to read piles" scattered around my house. As I read the book, I couldn't find any of the usual triggers that lead me to buy a book.
But I loved it. Really loved it. From the title story which opens the book--a brief story in which a single episode is used to illustrate the protagonist's entire life--to the amazing closing story, "The Stages of J. Gordon Whitehead," in which Heighton imagines what became of the titular character--a real person who essentially vanished after punching Harry Houdini in Montreal, effectively bringing about the magician's untimely death--Heighton's characters and plots kept me riveted.
If you're looking for some solid realistic fiction--even the wicked, squirmy "Professions of Love" in which a talented plastic surgeon "practices" on his aging wife--Heighton's Instructions for the Drowning is the place to turn.
But I loved it. Really loved it. From the title story which opens the book--a brief story in which a single episode is used to illustrate the protagonist's entire life--to the amazing closing story, "The Stages of J. Gordon Whitehead," in which Heighton imagines what became of the titular character--a real person who essentially vanished after punching Harry Houdini in Montreal, effectively bringing about the magician's untimely death--Heighton's characters and plots kept me riveted.
If you're looking for some solid realistic fiction--even the wicked, squirmy "Professions of Love" in which a talented plastic surgeon "practices" on his aging wife--Heighton's Instructions for the Drowning is the place to turn.
September 21, 2023
The author's poetic language and beautiful turn of phrases made this collection enjoyable.
"September is the Monday of months, the world lurching back into gear; a month of heavy lifting by bodies and minds summer-spoiled and rusty."
My stand out stories were: instructions for the Drowning (a couple goes on vacation and almost end up drowning each other), Professions of Love (a cosmetic surgeon finally gets to operate on his aging wife), and Expecting (at what lengths would you go to return someone's lost wallet).
RIP Steven Heighton
"September is the Monday of months, the world lurching back into gear; a month of heavy lifting by bodies and minds summer-spoiled and rusty."
My stand out stories were: instructions for the Drowning (a couple goes on vacation and almost end up drowning each other), Professions of Love (a cosmetic surgeon finally gets to operate on his aging wife), and Expecting (at what lengths would you go to return someone's lost wallet).
RIP Steven Heighton
Read
November 1, 2023A very strong collection centered around death that I found best when it was funny. I kept stalling to accept my loan from the library—for months—but finally accepted, and I’m glad I did. The stories about the man who punches his wife to try to save her from drowning (you gotta stop the thrashing), and the chronicle of the man who may have been responsible for Houdini’s death (ironically, by testing the strength of his abs with punches) and later became a fraudulent healer were my favorites.
January 11, 2024
This wonderful book of short stories by Steven Heighton was published posthumous.
There are 11 short stories about love and fear, idealisms and illusions, failures of muscle and mind and all the ways we try to care for one another, Steven Heighton’s Instructions for the Drowning is an indelible last collection by a writer working at the height of his powers.
A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2023 • One of CBC Books Best Books of 2023 • One of the Globe 100's Best Books of 2023
There are 11 short stories about love and fear, idealisms and illusions, failures of muscle and mind and all the ways we try to care for one another, Steven Heighton’s Instructions for the Drowning is an indelible last collection by a writer working at the height of his powers.
A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2023 • One of CBC Books Best Books of 2023 • One of the Globe 100's Best Books of 2023
January 12, 2024
Short stories are not usually my first choice as I often find I am left wanting more. I chose this one as I had really liked Heighton's memoir “Reaching Mithymna“ about his time as a volunteer at the refugee camps in Greece. While not surprisingly some of the stories did leave me wanting more, they were still thought provoking and beautiful reads. Many seemed to be themed around death and dying, perhaps because the author died of cancer before it was published. 3.75/5
January 17, 2024
In the last of his 20 books, the late Steven Heighton shows his supreme mastery of the traditional short story. We're pulled deep into the psyches of his fully realized male characters, along for the ride as they navigate the tribulations of modern masculinity--be it following a father's advice, trying to get in shape for a new love interest, or dealing with the anxiety of becoming a father. The stories haunt long after the book is closed.
February 5, 2024
This is devastatingly good and deeply poignant. Good, I suppose, because Heighton has always been good. A poet's poet, they say. And poignant because this slim selection of short stories was published posthumously, after Heighton's short illness and sudden death. How fitting that the stories intimately examine events of birth and death and the fade of life that comes in-between. I don't know how I found him, but undoubtedly found him in time.
October 4, 2023
I'm usually not a fan of the short story, but this collection stands out as worthwhile. My favorite selection was "Who Now Lies Sleeping" about a father finally coming to terms with his son's sexual orientation. I also liked this opening line from "Repeat to Failure": "September is the Monday of months..." The book was published posthumously.
December 22, 2023
These stories dive deep into the minds of middle-aged guys, grappling with their own aging and mortality. I was especially struck by the guy at the gym, and the kid and his dad out for a walk. Both haunted me in their own ways.
April 1, 2024
I had forgotten how much I enjoyed well crafted short stories. This book is filled with jewels- each story a world into itself. A Canadian writer I was not familiar with, whose untimely death leaves behind a brilliant literary legacy.
June 24, 2023
(3) Very original. Zoned out and had to re-read a couple chapters.
August 7, 2023
This is an outstanding collection of short stories. Each story is so different and each so compelling.
August 22, 2023
As usual with short stories, some I really liked and some less so but in the end I have to say: this guy is good!
September 12, 2023
Great collection. A few stories I loved, and not a bad one in the batch.
October 1, 2023
What a gift to get to see these stories, posthumous. We have lost a fearlessly vulnerable author.
October 12, 2023
Provocative story collection.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews