Book Review
Stanley Park by Timothy Taylor
Staley Park, a 2001 debut novel by the Vancouver author Timothy Taylor, hit the Canadian market by appealing the readers with its passionate home cook’s claim and fictional fame. Recently, while surfing for previous Canadian books in the book store, I came across this Giller Prize finalist. The cover drifted me towards it. The book appealed me so much that I couldn’t resist but finish reading it in a day. However, I read this book with great concentration and savoured the language and beautiful pictures that took me to a virtual world where I could witness every moment, live. The exotic mixture of food and fiction made this book a bestseller.
In this Novel, Jeremy Papier, a chef by profession, owns a tiny restaurant with an effort to serve indigenous local cuisines to the diners. He has splendid ideas to create his entire menu, a great choice to be made by eaters who favour local food. He is energetic and self-competent.
Meanwhile, his father, an anthropology professor, is living in the Stanley Park, a place far from the chaos and noises of the city. He aims to understand and help homeless people who live in the Stanley Park. Also, he hopes to solve the mystery of a murder in the Park of two children. Jeremy seldom understands his father, who is trying to recover himself from a failed marriage.
Disappointingly, his restaurant, The Monkey’s Paw Bistro, is eyed by Dante Beal, a Coffee Cafe chain owner. Indeed, Jeremy is into debt and he has to end up selling his restaurant to Dante to save himself from the financial chaos. To his disbelieve, Dante reassemble the restaurant according his Inferno style, a thing that reversed Jeremy’s piece of thought. This increased his disappointment. Indeed, his ideal love, Jules, working with him was fired by Dante.
Timothy’s Stanley Park described a unique relationship of father and son at the end when Jeremy finds his inner-self and realized about his father’s investigation of the Stanley Park murder and the voluntary support for the homeless people stranded in the Park. The characters and their appearance are just remarkable. With no doubts haunting my mind, Taylor is a person endowed with many talents. He has fused his ingenuity, know-how and creative writing skills to fashion a novel that makes the readers fall for his story.