Just one year after publishing his novel, It’s No Big Thing, Bowen Island author Nick Faragher is celebrating the publication of his second book of short-stories, Best Served Cold.
You may know Faragher from the Beer and Wine Store, or if you recall the early 90s on Bowen Island, The Snug Café – he was the first owner of the café under that name. Also during the nineties, Faragher’s writing made regular appearances in The Undercurrent.
“I just wrote about daily life here,” he says. “Being divorced and meeting the other parent to hand-off kids in Horseshoe Bay, playing on Eddie’s baseball team, things like that. People quite liked it I think.”
This bit of information makes sense, because as a reader of his stories, I sometimes felt as though I was reading The Undercurrent, only a “behind the scenes version” of the paper.
Best Served Cold features numerous stories set on Bowen, including one about the conflict between people who live on boats in Mannion Bay, and waterfront property owners.
Faragher’s stories also take readers to Italy, Greece, France and to the world as he experienced as a probation officer in both England and Ontario.
“I lived in Italy for two years in my 20s, and in France I lived in a small town near the alps on a huge piece of property with a well on it, which is where that story comes from,” he says, adding that many changes have been made to the story since its original publication. “A Place to Hang Out, The Boy and Angela’s Condition, these stories hark back to my work as a probation officer. I met sex offenders, rapists and murderers every day. These stories may make for some uncomfortable reading.”
Faragher laughs, however, at the suggestion made by a recent reviewer, that his stories are focused on sex and death.
“I don’t see it that way,” he says. “I do like my characters to be as real as possible, with imaginative twists just because I can. It is fiction after all.”
Help Nick Faragher celebrate the launch of Best Served Cold on Nov. 13, starting at 4 p.m. at the Gallery at Artisan Square.
