haven't even finished this book yet; not sure if i will. i picked it up because Anthony Bourdain mentioned liking it in one of his essays, but i find it so painfully dry and stuffy, trying to be more than what it is. exposition lasts way too long, there are too many subplots and unrealistic behaviors by characters, every character is annoying and the dialogue is a little too overblown and unnatural. i like some of the food descriptions but they are trying too hard to appeal to a chef's interests, not the interests of the average reader: it comes off a little snobby at times. i also don't like some of the sentence structure: i love an unconventional sentence, a run-on or fragment, but the way Taylor does it is very unnatural and distracting. and, the narration is too objective and far away from the story: why should i care what's going on if Taylor doesn't? i'll do my best to finish but not without my fair share of grunts and eye rolls.

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How does an aspiring chef balance idealism and realism? Morality and survival? If you like food, realistic adult struggles, and just a pinch of mystery and romance among self-discovery, you might want to pick this book up.

To start off- I don’t think this is a love story, or a mystery. This is a self-discovery story, a little selfish, and a little bit hipster. Along the lines of an adult self discovery, Chef Jeremy finds himself struggling with debt, self worth, and juggling his relationships with business partners, his father, and romantic interests. Jeremy has to discover what he truly values- Bloods or Crips? Freedom or Structure? Wilderness or society? There’s a lot of thematic parallelism and good imagery here, including delicious description after description of food. Sometimes verging on pretentious, this book is so steeped in the art of the gourmet that it’s a little overwhelming for the non-chef.

The first half of the book was a little slow, and mildly depressing. Jeremy struggles to hold onto The Monkey’s Paw, constantly reeling in the economic kite and dabbling in ventures that are less than legal for the sake of keeping his dream afloat. I found myself wondering when “Stanley Park,” the book’s namesake, would actually come into play.

We eventually get there. About halfway through the book, the pace picks up tremendously. Pieces begin to fall into place (or perhaps, falling apart), things move quickly, and ends begin to tie up. Jeremy begins to act and move forward instead of struggling just to remain in place. I found his struggle to be very realistic, but perhaps, a little on the dull side.

The “murder mystery” subplot is really just a subplot, so don’t get too excited about it. This was one of the most disappointing features of the book, as it seems the synopsis here is misleading about the nature of the mystery. Jeremy is not nearly as involved in this as he could be as he (understandably from the narrative) has his own issues to worry about, and its resolution feels empty, still unresolved. However, as a device for fitting into Jeremy’s life and nudging him along his path of discovery, it works well enough. The mystery leads Jeremy to understand something about his father, and about himself and his goals as a chef and an artist. I just wish my expectations had been a little lower waiting for the mystery.

While mostly from Jeremy’s perspective, a third-person omnipotent voice style of narrative comes into play in rare instances. The book is 90% Jeremy’s perspective, with a handful of paragraphs meandering to the thoughts of other people who happen to be in the room, and the occasional page or two directly from their perspective. I felt like this didn’t contribute much to the narrative, and while it wasn’t particularly off-putting, it just didn’t do anything for me. If the narrative had been more cleanly divided, and were there fewer jumps to unrelated past events or considerations, I would have enjoyed it more.

Overall, the book was enjoyable, picking up very quickly in the second half and with a very strong finish. I was pleased to see where Jeremy ended up after all of the mess, and felt a swell of pride for how far he had come. The prose is strong, the imagery good. There is a lot of time spent on food, and food serves as a very important motif here.

I found this book to be tedious. I was hoping for so much more. It dragged on and on and I could not wait for it to be done.

Regarding the time, it is very much the 1990s Vancouver that is at the forefront. The X-Files were largely shot around that city, but Last Chapter aka X-Files is a surface level reading, the same as Dante with his inferno, and that he was probably “somewhere underground” (hint: hell) when Jeremy could not contact him.

The 1990s are now often viewed as the “apolitical decade”, a time of relative stability when masculine gender roles also eventually redefined themselves or failed to do so. The moment at the end of the chapter “Babes in the Wood”, when Jeremy breaks down and starts crying in the restaurant, while probably intended to be a sad moment, and a wholesome moment when Caruzo is cheering him up, is also a typical moment of “men crying alone” (at least until Caruzo comes). But he starts crying alone because he tries to do all the things alone. Perhaps he had tried to protect Jules or keep her out of his troubles because of his masculine belief to be able to handle everything alone – which is perhaps a mix of surface level and deeper level reading of the text.

Recommended to me by my boyfriend at the time, this book was not one I'd typically choose for myself. The descriptions of food were very vibrant, but I stumbled along with the plot. The writing couldn't drag me in easily, and I had to work to immerse myself in it. I could definitely see why Reed likes it so much though!

Favourite Quotes:
"It surprised Jeremy, this slight bending of the massive trunk. He would have thought their weight was not enough to move such a great thing..."

"If somebody asked me, 'What are you trying to accomplish?' I would answer that I was trying to remind people of something. Of what the soil under their feet has to offer. Of a time when they would have known only the food that their own soil could offer."

"Food is a language. We must keep our sentences simple and coherent."

"I am interested in these different connections. The connections between people and the places they call their own. I am interested in how these connections are forged and broken. And how, for some, the connection refuses to break."

"The finished meal produces a period of natural reflection: Am I full or am I still empty?"

"...you needed bad days. You needed bad days to conquer, to make a job into a commitment."

"Too often, I think, the desire for freedom masks the desire for destruction."

This novel seemed so promising with a link to the mystery of two young children murdered in Vancouver's Stanley Park in the 1950s. The story focusses around a chef, Jeremy, and his father, an Anthropologist doing his fieldwork by living among the habitants of Stanley Park. The Professor's main drive is to figure out the mystery of the murders, but this fascinating story gets pushed back when the author spends too much time detailing restaurant menus.

it took me awhile to finish this book, but once i got to about halfway i couldn’t put it down! the rekindling of Jeremy and the Professor is beautifully written. Jeremy’s commitment to his art was humorous and, albeit unrealistic, incredibly entertaining and inspiring. It was an easy, light read and if you’re a vancouverite i recommend reading it, for a variety of reasons.

Excellent. Dark and somewhat convoluted, I found it very enjoyable. I confess to not quite getting all of the part about the hero’s father and the park, but I really liked the restaurant part and the whole arc of that story. Highly entertaining.

Something about this story is highly original. A novel centred around food - restaurants, cooking, tastes, smells and eating. While Chef Jeremy plays with food, his professor father lives in the park researching homeless people. Great descriptions of food and characters are excellent, but found the plot lacking some ingredients

Based in British Columbia, interesting reading on life of homeless and interactions with a cook and his father the professor. Recommend.

Really good.

In the middle of the book, the author really starts to beat you over the head with the symbolism, with a gigantic neon sign that says "This is symbolism!!". But it doesn't ruin anything.

He also gets some technology stuff wrong. One of the minor characters is a software guy and he says some things that are slightly cringe-worthy.

The descriptions of cooking (the main character is a chef) and the action inside kitchens is fantastic.

Mildly intriguing but not compelling and a little disturbing. There's too many subplots that don't connect at all, or even make sense. Needed a better editor to tell him these flavors don't go together. (See what I did there?) Too bad because there could have been a really good story in there. The best parts were the detailed descriptions of the gourmet restaurant cooking and how a commercial kitchen is created. Got this when we visited Vancouver, but it alone wouldn't make me want to visit again!