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A young chef who revels in local bounty, a long-ago murder that remains unsolved, the homeless of Stanley Park, a smooth-talking businessman named Dante -- these are the ingredients of Timothy Taylor's stunning debut novel -- Kitchen Confidential meets The Edible Woman.
Trained in France, Jeremy Papier, the young Vancouver chef, is becoming known for his unpretentious dishes that highlight fresh, local ingredients. His restaurant, The Monkey's Paw Bistro, while struggling financially, is attracting the attention of local foodies, and is not going unnoticed by Dante Beale, owner of a successful coffeehouse chain, Dante's Inferno. Meanwhile, Jeremy's father, an eccentric anthropologist, has moved into Stanley Park to better acquaint himself with the homeless and their daily struggles for food, shelter and company. Jeremy's father also has a strange fascination for a years-old unsolved murder case, known as "The Babes in the Wood" and asks Jeremy to help him research it.
Dante is dying to get his hands on The Monkey's Paw. When Jeremy's elaborate financial kite begins to fall, he is forced to sell to Dante and become his employee. The restaurant is closed for renovations, Inferno style. Jeremy plans a menu for opening night that he intends to be the greatest culinary statement he's ever made, one that unites the homeless with high foody society in a paparazzi-covered celebration of "local splendour."
About this Author
Timothy Taylor is the recent recipient of a National Magazine Award Gold Medal and the only writer ever to have three stories selected and published simultaneously in the Journey Prize Anthology. His short fiction has appeared in Canada's leading literary magazines and has been anthologized in such publications as Best Canadian Stories, Coming Attractions and Islands West. His novel, Stanley Park, was a national bestseller and a finalist for The Giller Prize. He lives in Vancouver.
Reviews
"Timothy Taylor writes straight, strong, unadorned prose.... He's well in command of his material. Writes great dialogue. Early on, he sets his scene, gives us Jeremy's background, and keeps his story, yes, cooking. Stanley Park is alive with the places and sights, sounds and smells, the psychic character of Vancouver. It thrums with a powerful sense of the city, urban surfaces as well as primal currents. Also food ... Taylor is as good as the American novelist Jim Harrison when it comes to writing about textures and tangs, colours and sensations." -- Quill & Quire
"Stanley Park is both feat and feast: a smart and enthralling narrative that urgently binds together its twin obsessions with place and food and culminates in a pièce de resistance that proves a triumph both for Chef Jeremy Papier and his creator, Timothy Taylor." -- Catherine Bush
"Stanley Park grabs an audience in a way that augurs a wide readership. [It's] like Babette's Feast or Chocolat. They all celebrate a meal that never was, a hope that the right meal can be turned into a Eucharist. Enjoy!" -- Vancouver Sun
"[A] vibrant debut novel...Taylor is a fine prose craftsman." -- Andre Mayer, eye, 29 Mar 2001
"Taylor's debut offers an inside look at the workings of a high-end restaurant, a cut-throat character in the person of a coffeehouse owner who wants to take it over and an intense sense of location, as the title suggests." -- NOW Magazine, 5 Apr 2001
"[Stanley Park] is a modern morality play with Jeremy Papier's very soul at stake...Stanley Park is an assured debut that stands well above many first novels. Taylor is a writer of undeniable talent who has proven himself adept at both the long and short form, and whose wave will no doubt reach the shores." -- Stephen Finucan, Toronto Star, 1 Apr 2001
"Delicious first novel must be savoured. [This] intelligent and leisurely...novel serves up chi-chi restaurants, Blood and Crip sous chefs and exotic culinary dishes, but it is also a pointed comment on the act of creation -- whether someone is working toward a soufflé, a movie, a work of art or a romp in the sack...[O]ne thing is clear: the talented Timothy Taylor...is very good at writing about food, on a par with Jim Harrison or Sara Suleri...You'll never look the same way at a weary chef or the loaded, coded words of a menu in your hands." -- Mark Anthony Jarman, Globe and Mail, 31 Mar 2001
"Vancouver breathes in Stanley Park, from its architecture and granola culture to its status as an American TV-show haven. It is a cosmopolitan, big city pushing to become an international, economic hub. It is also a natural wonder, with an ocean and a mountain range within spitting distance, a rainforest, and enough red tendencies to elect quite a few NDP governments. Jeremy is at once an élitist and a man of the people. Bravo to Timothy Taylor for capturing this tension so well...This is a poweful début; expect to hear a lot from him." -- Todd Babiak, Edmonton Journal
"Vancouver writer Timothy Taylor takes a meat cleaver to mystery fiction by packing the novel with backroom culinary politics, a heartwarming tale about a father-son reconciliation and some moralizing on the outrage we should feel about the wastefulness of bourgeois society. What it all simmers down to is a frothy entertainment with a dash of piquancy...it is a well-calculated piece of fiction...with just the right amount of angst and social conscience." -- Montreal Gazette
"A charming first novel...unflaggingly intelligent." -- Maclean's
"Your mouth waters as you read Timothy Taylor's first novel. Not since Isak Dinesen's Babette's Feast has so lavish a table been set for a reader. If Margaret Atwood's first novel The Edible Woman put you off food, this one will put you back on it...In Stanley Park he does for the restaurant business what John le Carré does for spying; he makes it alluring. And he does for food what Patrick Suskind does for perfume; he makes it exciting...Timothy Taylor has written a novel with a plot to return to, characters to remain with, and themes to think about. The quest for authenticity, for instance, isn't an easy one, either for fictional characters or real people. His style skips along merrily...He also casually slips in some of the most mouth-watering recipes ever sprinkled on the pages of Canadian fiction." -- J.S. Porter, National Post
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