Retrieve Stanley Park Produced By Timothy Taylor Document

was a fun book to read, Timothy Taylor has a way with words and can really make you feel like you're in a situation, This isn't the best book I ever read, but it does have some very thoughtprovoking moments and some really interesting characters, I really struggled to get into thjs novel, I found the story arc strangely stunted and difficult to engage with over a long period of time, It took me a week to stick it through in the end and it was the kitchen scenes more than Stanley Park which the book is named for that I enjoyed.
After the first few chapters I thought for sure that this book was going to be a struggle to finish, It was bizarre and crazy, But somehow those weird characters, strange ideas and curious happenings turned into an enthralling read,
The author really knows Vancouver, He caught the attitudes of the hippie vs, hipster vs. corporate vs. homeless that made it obvious he's lived and been a part of this city,
The entire story revolves around the son and his cooking, Which kind of makes it sound like a foodie story but I found it good even though I am not usually a fan of food descriptions I don't cook and don't care to learn, thus not making me very interested.
The characters include the homeless maybe crazy, a corporate bigwig, chefs, a librarian and lots of credit trust me it's almost a character,
The nemesis Dante, his business and his attitude were a favorite part for me, He's a successful creep and I wonder who he's based on because he kinda reminds me of Chip Wilson lululemon founder,
Somehow a jumble of people and stories managed to be cohesive and engaging, A fun book but one that you need a computer amp wifi near so you can look up words Wish I could give a,. It was really, really good, Wonderful to be able to really "see" the places in Vancouver, and think about a Stanley Park that I've never seen, Definite recommend. There were so many things that annoyed me about this book that I am surprised that I finished it, and wondering why I did, though I will admit to a fair amount of skimming.
I will not list all of the parts of this book that I found aggravating because I have spent too much time on this book already, and it would likely exceed the GR character limits for reviews.
So, here are the bigger points that made me want to throw my poor, innocent ereader across the room I did refrain, but reading BLARGH! this book was like rubbing my mind with sandpaper.
So, here we go:

gtSo, Jeremy and his partner in the first restaurant adamantly refuse to have vegetarian options, in Vancouver BC, but then wonder why they are struggling to stay afloat without one vegetarian option ever, in Vancouver areyoukiddingmenovegetarianoptions BC
they lose all of those many potential clients, and often their friends but then wonder why they are struggling
they lose all of those potential, returnbusiness locals because of that ignorant decision
and seriously, it's VANCOUVER BC AND THEY HAVE NO VEGETARIAN OPTIONS!
that is just bad business

gtOh, but then they often make offmenu special meals for people involved in the TVmovie industry
people they know are unlikely to be return customers, and highly unlikely to pass the word on to others, especially others who might be regular clients

gtOne of the characters actually says something along the lines of 'can't eat tofu because everyone knows it is only fword for gay people who eat the stuff'
yes, the author spells out the fword in the book
and yes, the author chooses the two syllable version of the word
yes, it was part of the author's heavyhanded indication that the person saying it was a bad guy but protagonist Jermey laughed along with evilguy
and seriously! the fword for gay people!!
and seriously! it's what people are if they eat tofu!!
and seriously!! what about women!!
and seriously!! do people still engage in that level of misogyny and homophobia, and am I supposed to be impressed he crammed so much of each into one short sentence!!
oh, and the book is set in the late's so it is not 'just the times'

gtand really what about women
the men in this book were so shallow but also so overdone that they were almost caricatures rather than characters but they were at least persons.

the women in this book on the other hand are not really characters at all, Here we have:
the dead mother, mentioned but not really a character in her own right
the past love/sex interest about whom Jeremy can wax nostalgic
the onewhogotaway love/sex interest who ended up with the best friend, and about whom Jermey can wax wistful
the can'tbewithyoubecausewe'rebusinesspartners love/sex interest about whom Jeremey can wax martyrdom
the addahem'interest'throughinclusionofanotherwoman love/sex interest about whom Jeremey can wax lust
a female waitress who make occasional appearances, but whose main scene is to show her manhating, ranting about males side
a female culinary school student that Jeremey hires with four young men in the same class
she is either listed entirely as one of three names along with at least two of the male characters
while two of the male characters have speaking roles and character ahem 'development' this woman remains one of a group
her only speaking role is to become the butt of an inside joke that the author forces his reader to participate in by having this female character declare that when she opens a restaurant it will serve tofu, having no idea that, apparently in her world, only fword for gay people people eat it.
Blargh seriously!
oh, the news/magazine writer who might have been interesting but only showed up for a couple of pages and ultimately, where she could have had an interesting or important role apparently got scooped by others who were not there and so how did they get the information, and ultimately despite her 'bombshell' served the purposes of the evil one who normally would have been harmed by it so the author was sure to take away any power/standing she had in the book by giving it back to one of the men in it.

the level of misogyny and sexism in this book was disturbing

gtSomewhere aroundof they way in the first and only decisively nonwhite character makes an appearance
not much more than an appearance
this is a man from Latin America, who is as the author carefully points out is very grateful that Jeremey gave him a minimumwage job as a dishwasher at the new restaurant, because hey, why not also play that areyoukiddingme stereotype card

gtthat's not how homeless people do

gtI hated Jeremy
he is just so completely and utterly annoying, but also just completely and utterly stupid and dishonest and pretentious

and so on, but I am just so utterly done with this book that I refuse to spend any more time on it.
I am glad I can return this one to the library and I will not be looking up anymore work by this author,
This book took me a few years to read which led to a rather disjointed effect, and in the end, what I was told by the person who recommended it was that 'it's one of those odd Canadian books that I quite enjoyed by the end' turned out to be a perfect description.


Yes. I did quite enjoy the end of this book, but it was rather slow going until about pg,

My main issue with it was that the main POV, Jeremy, was very anodyne, Described by an external POV as a merry prankster made me go what because he was the blandest Faust I'd encountered, There was no sense of anything merry or pranksterlike about him,

A lot of the early sections were about the languid descent into debt and poor choices, They were tiring to get through, and I always felt distant from the POV so his decisions never actually convinced me, It meant that although I enjoyed the denoument, I still felt it could have been sharper and better, The descriptions of food were lovely, but not visceral, I did not experience them, I was told about them,

I was rather put off by the way Jeremy interacted with the female characters also, It was like a list of people he had/should have/could have had a romantic relationship with, rather than people he did have a relationship with, colleagues and friends.
Regardless of his 'sticking it to the man' approach, he did nothing but the very minimum to try to make up to Jules of Ruining Something Important to her, and there is no way he deserved her attention at all.


My favorite character of all was Kiwi Frederique, who was a merry prankster, and was so delighted by the Events of The End that I was delighted along with her.


Oddly, though the book is called Stanley Park and it spends a lot of time in Stanley Park, I never got a good sense of the sort of space Stanley Park is.
It needed a bit more grounding for the nonVancouverites in the audience,

Also, as a final note, the review on the back of the book that compares this book favorably to Anthony Bourdain is Full Of Garbage.
sitelinkKitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly had what this book lacked in spades, clarity, vividness, the sense of an experience of eating food, and personality, and that was his journeyman work.
RIP. ltI basically hated this book by the end of it, There's a lot of potentially interesting thematic stuff in it homelessness in public parks, foodiness, groundedness/sense of place, Vancouver itself, but the whole thing is a hot mess that had me skimming just to get to the goddamn end by final quarter.


Jeremy Papier is a young and talented chef trying to make a farmtotable restaurant float in crosstown in the lates when this was still a new thing.
His father is an eccentric anthropologist living in Stanley Park with homeless people, As Jeremy struggles financially, he gets sucked into his father's life in the park at nighttime,

There are so many pointless side/back/offstories that add nothing, Example: the main character's mother's history, the detailed backstory of homeless people in the park, an unsolved murder, a uncanny godchild, something about first nations people recolonizing the park None of these things matter in the least.
The dialogue is terrible. The latenineties setting feels dated, and the stuff that should be cool just isn't anymore: "the Monkey's Paw Bistro" ugh eew, Even the central love interest is romanticcomedy shallow: attraction, obstacle, resolution, The pacing of the book is horrible you just want it to be over by the first main plot turn, The final denouement is the longest most drawn out piece of sappy pointlessness I've read in a while,

The most annoying thing about it stylistically is the fauxmysterious fauxcryptic "poetic"

tone adopted at various passages, mostly as Jeremy is wandering around Stanley Park.
Maybe the author thinks he's being edgy and cool by having bizarre non sequiturs or leaving simple chronological events mysteriously unfinished, but it is merely ridiculous and artificial.
No, you cannot convince me that there is something 'deep' to be gleaned from all this except maybe that this author tries very, very, hard,

The most successful parts of the book are around food, and take place in and around Jeremy's restaurant kitchen, Jeremy himself isn't a wholly uninteresting character though pretty much everyone else is, A simpler story about a new restaurant in financial trouble and a complicated relationship with a father would have been so, so much better, This is a book where the flaws of form and content are deeply connected, and there's no easy fix even an editor taking a hack at it wouldn't work because almost the whole thing is devoted to tangents with no beauty, no emotion, and no real stakes.
Maybe very looselybased movie could work, .