Timothy Taylor’s Stanley Park

I’ve just finished re-reading Timothy Taylor’s Stanley Park in preparation for teaching it after our reading break. It’s been six or seven years since I first/last read it, and I was pleased, but not surprised, to find that I enjoyed it even more this time ’round. I’ve got many, many spots marked with little post-it notes to go back and capture images, themes, felicitous turns-of-phrase, such note-making a witness to the novel’s density. It’s been reviewed and lauded so often that I won’t try to add any kind of review here except to say that if you’re interested in the challenges of how to be/have local in a global economy, or in food in its travels from earth to mouth, or in the relationship between urban and wild, or if you’re planning a visit to Vanc’r and would like to get a literary glimpse at it — you’ll find Taylor’s book entertaining and thought-provoking. Straight-ahead story-telling with convincing settings, interesting characters, and chewy concepts, it kept me reading even through the exhaustion of my recent bout with the ‘flu, and it’s got my 4th-year students happy to spend their Reading Break doing just that.

The photos above and below are ones I took in Stanley Park last fall.