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High-Water Mark
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.
- GenresShort Stories
152 pages, Paperback
First published October 15, 2012
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Nicole Dixon
25 books5 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author with this name on GR
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
November 25, 2012
We’re at it again. Showing off how good we Canadians are at writing short stories. It’s because short stories have no place for long, dull character or landscape descriptions and lots of place for sharp dialogue.
And sharp dialogue is one of the strengths of Nicole Dixon’s collection of 10 stories in High-Water Mark. Sharp dialogue and sharp phrases, such as the opening line of “You Wouldn’t Recognize Me”: the phrase “I woke up upside down” introduces to the car crash that just happened and opens the story. The dialogue is so sharp, in fact, that in one story, “Saudade,” it becomes somewhat hard to follow in places. Still, these instances are rare.
Besides “sharp,” another adjective that you could pin to these stories is “sexy.” I’ll admit it, I stole the phrase “sexy debut” from the publisher. But only because it’s apt. The sexiness may not be evident from the cover, but it’s evident enough once you get a couple of stories in: almost every story has sex in it. This is the book’s strength and also its weakness — it makes the stories a bit repetitive, but it also makes them exciting.
Despite the repetition, though, the stories move along fast enough, driven by that sharp, confident, piercingly accurate prose.
The strongest stories here are the first, “High-Water Mark,” and the last, “You Wouldn’t Recognize Me,” followed closely by “Sick Days.” All three of these stories share one important commonality: they don’t shy away from a little bit of sentiment. Mostly, Dixon exhibits a terse intelligence, but that she does so only makes the rarer moments of well-handled emotion all the more moving.
*This review was originally published on Laura's Book Reviews at www.stuffimreading.wordpress.com*
And sharp dialogue is one of the strengths of Nicole Dixon’s collection of 10 stories in High-Water Mark. Sharp dialogue and sharp phrases, such as the opening line of “You Wouldn’t Recognize Me”: the phrase “I woke up upside down” introduces to the car crash that just happened and opens the story. The dialogue is so sharp, in fact, that in one story, “Saudade,” it becomes somewhat hard to follow in places. Still, these instances are rare.
Besides “sharp,” another adjective that you could pin to these stories is “sexy.” I’ll admit it, I stole the phrase “sexy debut” from the publisher. But only because it’s apt. The sexiness may not be evident from the cover, but it’s evident enough once you get a couple of stories in: almost every story has sex in it. This is the book’s strength and also its weakness — it makes the stories a bit repetitive, but it also makes them exciting.
Despite the repetition, though, the stories move along fast enough, driven by that sharp, confident, piercingly accurate prose.
The strongest stories here are the first, “High-Water Mark,” and the last, “You Wouldn’t Recognize Me,” followed closely by “Sick Days.” All three of these stories share one important commonality: they don’t shy away from a little bit of sentiment. Mostly, Dixon exhibits a terse intelligence, but that she does so only makes the rarer moments of well-handled emotion all the more moving.
*This review was originally published on Laura's Book Reviews at www.stuffimreading.wordpress.com*
December 25, 2025
As I said in my review in ForeWord Magazine, this fine collection of stories 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 in a car. But with a little more kink. And more edge.
One of the pleasures of High-Water Mark is the writing itself. People and landscape are made vivid, whether it’s a woman’s face described as “ruddy and slightly lined, like a February apple” or the end of a path opening “like the jaw of a beast, all waves and sky and rowdy wind.”
Another pleasure is the strong voice that comes through no matter who is narrating, from snarky teens to horny husbands. There is no sentimentality, just telling it like it is, as if the author is not going to baby the reader any more than her characters baby their students, parents, or offspring. In places like Refugee Cove, babies are an industry and adults are the children. Kids like Ainslee, who has a summer job in the gift shop at the Cape, sound like authorities before they’re even out of school: “The world doesn’t need any more people, so it picks at them like scabs and off they go.”
The 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. In “Diving for Pearls,” a girl comes home pregnant after vagabonding her way around the world, “stupid in love” with a guy in Belize, but as trapped as the lobsters she helps her father catch. In “An Unkindness of Ravens,” a young couple struggles with jealousy, cooped up in a relationship that ends with an injured raven being released back into “the group, the family, being unkind.” In “Mona Says Fire, Fire, Fire,” a school teacher who’s grown tired of the chase, catch, and release of relationships comes close to snuffing out “the lick of flame” between her and her boyfriend instead of seeing it “crackle” like the northern lights.
In fact, like repeat tourists who come back each summer to Cape Breton “for the high, the shock,” the chance to touch the fire to remember it’s hot, the reader will also get a charge out of these stories. There is life here.
One of the pleasures of High-Water Mark is the writing itself. People and landscape are made vivid, whether it’s a woman’s face described as “ruddy and slightly lined, like a February apple” or the end of a path opening “like the jaw of a beast, all waves and sky and rowdy wind.”
Another pleasure is the strong voice that comes through no matter who is narrating, from snarky teens to horny husbands. There is no sentimentality, just telling it like it is, as if the author is not going to baby the reader any more than her characters baby their students, parents, or offspring. In places like Refugee Cove, babies are an industry and adults are the children. Kids like Ainslee, who has a summer job in the gift shop at the Cape, sound like authorities before they’re even out of school: “The world doesn’t need any more people, so it picks at them like scabs and off they go.”
The 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. In “Diving for Pearls,” a girl comes home pregnant after vagabonding her way around the world, “stupid in love” with a guy in Belize, but as trapped as the lobsters she helps her father catch. In “An Unkindness of Ravens,” a young couple struggles with jealousy, cooped up in a relationship that ends with an injured raven being released back into “the group, the family, being unkind.” In “Mona Says Fire, Fire, Fire,” a school teacher who’s grown tired of the chase, catch, and release of relationships comes close to snuffing out “the lick of flame” between her and her boyfriend instead of seeing it “crackle” like the northern lights.
In fact, like repeat tourists who come back each summer to Cape Breton “for the high, the shock,” the chance to touch the fire to remember it’s hot, the reader will also get a charge out of these stories. There is life here.
August 25, 2013
Actual rating 4.5 stars.
I won a copy of this book from CBC radio's Mainstreet program in Halifax. I did say I would review the book here if I won it, as extra incentive for them to pick me in the contest, so I guess it worked! ;)
After saying in my last review that I don't think I "get" short fiction, I actually loved this collection. I think the fact that the stories are loosely connected and all together in one novel-length read really helped. But this one had me from the first, intense paragraph.
The writing style is very readable, full of emotion but far from melodramatic which seems like a hard feat to achieve (or maybe I just read to much YA melodrama lit?).
I also loved how there were identifiable Nova Scotian and other Canadian places in the stories but it was just a natural part of the narrative, not a giant plot point or big flashing sign saying "look, I'm writing about Canada!"
The stories being almost exclusively from a female point of view was also interesting. I think it tied the stories together that much more.
Really, really liked this one. Buy it from an indie bookstore. :)
I won a copy of this book from CBC radio's Mainstreet program in Halifax. I did say I would review the book here if I won it, as extra incentive for them to pick me in the contest, so I guess it worked! ;)
After saying in my last review that I don't think I "get" short fiction, I actually loved this collection. I think the fact that the stories are loosely connected and all together in one novel-length read really helped. But this one had me from the first, intense paragraph.
The writing style is very readable, full of emotion but far from melodramatic which seems like a hard feat to achieve (or maybe I just read to much YA melodrama lit?).
I also loved how there were identifiable Nova Scotian and other Canadian places in the stories but it was just a natural part of the narrative, not a giant plot point or big flashing sign saying "look, I'm writing about Canada!"
The stories being almost exclusively from a female point of view was also interesting. I think it tied the stories together that much more.
Really, really liked this one. Buy it from an indie bookstore. :)
December 16, 2012
These ten tightly-plotted stories are proof that Canadian writing can be as contemporary and literary as any other country's, and don't always have to be just about the place they're set in (although a couple of them are, in addition to being about other things). Nicole Dixon writes strong, messed-up, confrontational, and very human characters, and has an incredible ear for dialogue. Great book - get a copy.
July 1, 2021
2.5-3 The short stories are okay and I enjoyed them well enough. Exploration of womanhood in the 21st century.
December 25, 2025
This was really good
July 24, 2013
Who we are and where we live defines us in ways that we do not realize. So reading outside of our comfort zone not only enlightens us about other situations but makes us re-think about our actions. Nicole Dixon has written a collection of short stories in High-Water Mark that does just that.
Page 9 - High-Water Mark
I have a summer job in the gift shop up at the Cape. The Cape's a big cliff way up high and way out in the water and way far away from town. I had to buy a truck - a blue-and-white Ford - to get myself up there and back, but mostly Robbie drives it since he's twenty-five and has a licence and I can't get my beginner's yet. Robbie had a licence, I should say.
The gift shop looks like a lighthouse and it's the first thing the tourist see when they park their big, shiny American SUVs and all their kids pile out like clowns and squeeze into their shop. They ask if this is the lighthouse they've driven all this way to see and I say, no, the real one's down that hill and they unfold the folded T-shirts with their ice cream fingers and shuffle the postcards and stink up the bathroom and grumble about the drive up the road, like it's personally my responsibility to pave it, even though it's the first time they've really used their SUVs. And then they complain about having to walk down the hill and ask, can they drive? and ask, could I take their picture? and ask, how much are the T-shirts? and ask, do I see many whales? and ask, what do I do around here for fun?
Tourism's a verbal assembly line.
These stories are told from a women's perspective and give frank discussions about relationships, sex, homes, parents, and careers.
my complete review
Page 9 - High-Water Mark
I have a summer job in the gift shop up at the Cape. The Cape's a big cliff way up high and way out in the water and way far away from town. I had to buy a truck - a blue-and-white Ford - to get myself up there and back, but mostly Robbie drives it since he's twenty-five and has a licence and I can't get my beginner's yet. Robbie had a licence, I should say.
The gift shop looks like a lighthouse and it's the first thing the tourist see when they park their big, shiny American SUVs and all their kids pile out like clowns and squeeze into their shop. They ask if this is the lighthouse they've driven all this way to see and I say, no, the real one's down that hill and they unfold the folded T-shirts with their ice cream fingers and shuffle the postcards and stink up the bathroom and grumble about the drive up the road, like it's personally my responsibility to pave it, even though it's the first time they've really used their SUVs. And then they complain about having to walk down the hill and ask, can they drive? and ask, could I take their picture? and ask, how much are the T-shirts? and ask, do I see many whales? and ask, what do I do around here for fun?
Tourism's a verbal assembly line.
These stories are told from a women's perspective and give frank discussions about relationships, sex, homes, parents, and careers.
my complete review
November 6, 2014
Not my cup of tea. A series of stories about women's lives. I found them a bit repetitive. I suspect I might have found more in them in my early 20s.
March 18, 2015
Great stories to read aloud or on your own. I have the privilege to know the author and reading the book was like hanging out with her past, present and future selves all at once. I recommend it !
June 7, 2016
Diverse, spare, honest, compelling stories.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews