Timothy Taylor's Stanley Park was not at all the book I was expecting and I'm so pleased!

I live near and work in Vancouver, British Columbia. I have visited the city neighbourhoods, and Stanley Park many times. So, when I first picked up this book, it was out of a sense of loyalty to a BCer and what I thought would be a mutual understanding of the landscape I'd be entering. That was my misjudgment; I fell for the bait - peanut butter, epoxy and sinker.

The main character, Jeremy, is a swaggering, cowboy boot-wearing chef who trained in a small restaurant in France. He has come back to Vancouver, full of ideals, with his gifted, expensive chef knife, passionate about serving local produce, fish, and game. So he starts a small restaurant - The Monkey's Paw - that embodies his ideals and quickly racks up tremendous debt. The build of this debt - and all of Jeremy's behaviour around it - is very uncomfortable to read about. But there are just enough moments of respite to keep you reading - memories of France, interactions with his dad, the Professor, (an anthropologist?) who is living homeless by choice in Stanley Park doing research for a book. The Professor has become ingrained in the secrets of the Park. He has come to know and care for a few genuinely homeless characters who hide there. From them, he has learned how to hunt wild game - squirrel, sparrow, duck, etc for his meals. He also tries to unearth the mystery of the two young children's bodies found there in the 50's - the Babes in the Wood. (This is not a mystery novel, by the way. That is never resolved.)

Jeremy becomes gradually absorbed by his father's world there. I enjoyed Jeremy's escapes into Stanley Park, the connections he makes there, along with the slow mending of his relationship with his father. Simultaneously, I had a hard time understanding where it was leading.

But back at the restaurant, just when you think you can't read about Jeremy's mounting debt anymore, the sneering devil-villain lurking in the shadows, Dante Beale, bails him out. Dante owns a hip, new, internationally successful cafe chain called Inferno. We learn that Dante had been hunting Jeremy all along and set a trap to acquire him. And so, Jeremy finds himself a pawn in Dante's hypocritical, greedy game.

But then Jeremy sets up his own elaborate trap! When I realized what he was doing, I couldn't put it down at that point. I was both amused, excited and a tad disgusted with what the story was building up to.

This Stanley Park - this Vancouver - was not the book or place I thought I was entering. While I recognized buildings (the library), neighbourhoods, local cultural references/parodies (X Files), I was taken right off the map, down some winding paths and ended up a little confused and thrust into a satirical landscape. But who cares! I enjoyed the ride! Yes, Stanley Park begins as a "copious" incongruous mix of stuff. But, in the end, we're served a simple plate, with mostly identifiable and complimentary ingredients.

Vivid and readable, full of tempting (if sometimes surprising) dishes - and, more importantly, a moving reflection on what it means to say "home".

Enjoyed tremendously

It took me a while to like this book, but by the time I got to the "last/first meal" I could hardly put it down! The descriptions of food and menus were great, so were the descriptions of what it is like to work in a busy, important kitchen. The stuff about cooking wildlife was creepy, but really anyone who eats meat has to face up to the fact that we eat animals, wild or not. I recommend this book to anyone who thinks about what they eat and why.

There are a lot of flawed characters in the book. The chef, who is up to his eyeballs in debt and kiting cheques, his father, who is an anthropologist studying people who live rough in Stanley Park and has gone feral, the other park dwellers, and an amoral coffee tycoon. There is a subplot which has the father sending his son to research the (true) story of the “Babes in the Park”, but the search turns on itself and is never explained. There are forays into the supernatural that don’t seem to have anything to do with the plot. There is one really spectacular meal, though.

My book club mission was to read this Vancouver-set story in time to discuss with others on campus, and it was down to the wire - literally reading the final pages in my car (while chowing down on a locally-produced hamburger) moments before rejoining the alumni book club. Part of me was fascinated with the setting, particularly with the indigenous and immigrant cultures populating Stanley Park. The other part of me was put off by the turn-of-the-millennium references to foodies, so 2001! Being a part of the put-upon culture of foodism, with ground zero located in the towers of Yaletown, it seems like a less lethal addiction than crack, alcohol or cellular phones. However, my experience with the with the Blood and Crip-camps visiting local restaurants was just as toxic, especially if you thought of food merely as a source of nourishment. Jeremy's relation to the Blood-style of serving was just as irritating as I imagined, but his "centaur's feast" near the end plays havoc on the corporate Devil who wants to repackage the 100-mile diet on a post-national scale.

Lots of more to write about the Lost Lagoon "boys" and will have to get back to this blurb soon.

2.5 stars.
Great concept that never gets realized; buried under tedious descriptions of tacky fashion, tacky design, and food that sounds amazing but never comes to life. I didn't recognize my city in these pages, even though it was written for insiders who know street and place names. The characters and their relationships never felt real. It was a confusing journey through 423 pages that didn't take me far.

This book started slowly, but by the time I was halfway in, I was loving it. It’s the story of a chef, trained in France , born in Vancouver who runs his restaurant near Stanley Park (Vancouver). Meanwhile, his father who is an anthropologist, is living in the park, befriending and studying the homeless people who also live there. It’s weird but there’s a lot about food, restaurants, nature, creatures in the park and relationships. And caring for and about others. I ended loving it- especially the ending.

This book was slow and boring. I live in Vancouver so I thought it would be interested in the location, but it could have been set in any city and would have felt the same to me. So glad I can move on from this one.

I'm abandoning this book after 123 pages. Sorry Jim. I do like the concept and appreciate the themes underlying the narrative, but I feel somewhat detached from the protagonist and am not really in the right mindset to be invested in his situation. So this one goes back to my mum's shelf unfinished (although apparently she didn't finish it either). I think this is the only Canada Reads book that I've left unfinished so far (I don't read all of them, just the ones I think are interesting).

I've been working on a Canadian Reading Challenge, and wanted to find a book set in BC or by a BC author. This one was on the shelf at my local library branch, and it sounded pretty interesting, so I decided it would work.

I enjoyed both of the main story lines, the one about Jeremy and his restaurant, and the one about Jeremy and his father, but they seemed so unrelated that I couldn't imagine how it was all going to come together in the end. The way they did was beyond my wildest imaginings!

I can see why some people wouldn't enjoy this book, but I am very glad I discovered it.

The story of a man who descends into debt. Jeremy is a successful chef but his first run at a restaurant is slow at turning a profit and he uses kiting to keep himself afloat. This is basically "robbing Peter to pay Paul " and always staying ahead, just a little bit. We follow his grief and anxiety as he realizes he'll get caught one day and have to ask for help again from the very tough business friend who owned him the money in the first place. There is also a cold case of two siblings being played out as well.

I honestly thought this would be a dnf when I read the brief and boring synopsis on the back. I don't think whoever wrote it read the book as I was hooked immediately. The writing is excellent though too many culinary metaphors etc were used. There was so much going on you didn't know what direction it would take in the end and I was delighted with glee when the sinister end plan came together. I felt so vindicated for Jeremy. A great piece of Canadian literature with top-notch writing style.