Stanley Park

This novel features Jeremy Papier, a chef struggling with major financial problems, his father, "the Professor," an anthropologist writing about the schizophrenic of Vancouver's Stanley Park and showing signs of becoming one himself, and Dante Beale, a British Columbian counterpart to Howard Schultz who owns an espresso coffee chain tellingly called "Inferno." Dante, a former neighbor of Professor Papier and his son, admires Jeremy's skill tremendously and would like to open a restaurant with him. But he can't resist his own unbounded faith in his corporate resesearch, to the point of telling Jeremy what color food to cook, or his tendency to micromanage. Several other characters, most closely involved with Jeremy, and the Professor's research on the death of two children decades before complete the story nicely. More than the sum of its parts, like any fine meal.

I liked Taylor's style of building suspense by making you wonder what he is talking about...you have to read another few pages to find out, and by that time another element of the story has crept in. I worked at a restaurant in Paris, and bought pots and knives through a chef I knew there. I now live in the Vancouver area, so it was great fun to read names of places and things that are familiar. I also am old enough to remember the little children being found in the park. All these subplots, all connected to his "cultiver ton jardin" theme, made this culinary delight a thoroughly enjoyable and satisfying read.

Defnitely worth reading ... humanistic and delivers a great story while touching on important themes for all of us...

Food is THE staple of life, the most primordial element of mankind's continuing survival. Without food, without sustenance, man withers and dies, empty and unsatisfied. Food is good, and everyone knows it. So why do we continually shovel it down our throats without a thought as to the preparation, the presentation, the simple TASTE of the substance? We need food, but we rarely give two thoughts as to its true importance in our lives.Timothy Taylor has come to the same conclusion, that man has ignored the nobility of food and its prepartion for long enough. It's time to remind the common folk of what good food can be, an entire experience that can be savoured in one's mind for weeks on end. Taylor has risen to this challenge with admirable verve; his STANLEY PARK is a true feast for the mind.STANLEY PARK (named after a famous park in Vancouver, British Columbia) follows the exploits of Jeremy Papier, chef par excellance. Unfortunately for Jeremy, what he has in talent, he lacks in financial acumen, and his restaurant (The Monkey's Paw) is continually on the verge of complete collapse. Jeremy is a Blood; that is, a chef respectful of local culinary traditions and customs, using only local produce for his meals. He finds it increasingly difficult to match wits with the Crips, chefs who consider themselves artists first and foremost, creating unusual meals though unorthodox combinations of foods (eg., Prawns with Spiced Yam Wafers, Grappa and Thai Ginger Cream). In a culture where being hip is being odd, Jeremy is all the odder for sticking to his Blood guns. Add to the mix an increasing pressure by famous coffee businessman Dante (owner of Dante's Inferno coffeehouses, a thinly veiled attack on Starbucks)to purchase Jeremy's talent and restaurant, and a father who has taken to living in Stanley Park to study the homeless, and Jeremy's life has taken on mythic proportions of personal angst.Aas may be expected, Taylor excels in his detailed descriptions of life within a restaurant; the highs, the lows, the dizzying speed of food preparation and service, the exhaustion of a day's work, the pleasure of creating something that will be destroyed within minutes. Taylor captures the focussed pressure of a busy restaurant that will be intimately familiar with anyone in the service industry, and possibly stupefying to anyone without previous experience. The amount of talent and work that can go into every meal is rendered with perfect prose; Taylor's descriptions of food rank among the best, alongside Laura Esquivel's LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE and a particularly vivid passage from Richard Condon's PRIZZI'S HONOUR that still haunts this reviewer years later. And Jeremy's efforts to avoid the collapse of his dream are on par with the desperate real-life efforts to stave off bankruptcy in Johnathan Harr's A CIVIL ACTION, but far funnier.Taylor also nicely captures Jeremy's anxiety of 'selling out' to Dante; as an antidote, he begins to hang out wit

Taylor is a truly gifted writer and Stanley Park does not disappoint. I picked this book up when I was vacationing in Vancouver and even after I returned home, I was able to relive my stay there through this book.. If you are a fan of Vancouver, cooking, or great literature, pick this one up. Taylor also has an impressive book of short stories called Silent Cruise but I believe that you can only purchase this one in Canada. I was able to order it from Chapters.com (a Canadian book store).