When widowed father and substitute teacher Peter Giller leads an eleventh-grade class on a field trip to a plastics factory, he thinks the worst that could happen is that the parent volunteers won�t show up (they don�t), the kids will be rude (they are) or the free lunch will be terrible (it is).
Then a leaking pipe sprays Peter and the students with a mysterious pink goo and 'the worst that could happen' spikes from inconvenient to catastrophic. At first, the goo's side effects are mild: short-temperedness, sawdust-scented B.O. and an unquenchable craving for bacon. Then things get spooky: Peter's fingers start falling off, his students forget how to read, no one has to pee—ever—and empathy for human suffering plummets, especially if anyone gets between them and their bacon.
Peter can't figure out what's happening—surely he's not a zombie? At no time in any movie does a zombie drive a car and count on his reattached fingers the ways in which he is not a zombie, and anyway, Peter craves bacon, not brains. But normal people don't put their bodies back together with staple guns and thumbtacks, or contemplate biting off ears. Peter's definitely not fit to be around his children, and his mother-in-law 'temporarily' adopts them.
Peter's children are all he has left, and he�ll do anything to be with them again. He races across the country in a stolen ambulance to face down pinstriped bureaucrats, affectionate farm girls and monsters plucked from mythology in his search for the cure—if it exists—to his horrifying condition. All-Day Breakfast will satisfy all appetites for the visceral, the violent and the hilarious.
"...this is a zombie story with its tongue firmly in its cheek…It’s that chafing between literary and goofball genre tropes that gives All-Day Breakfast much of its zing…All-Day Breakfast has the depth and care of a literary novel...pure, goofy joy."
"However, the novel isn’t just "pure, goofy joy," as described by one reviewer. All-Day Breakfast also deals with some heavy subjects -- cancer, terminal illness, and the loss of a spouse."
"...It’s side-splitting...razor-sharp literary prose...Schroeder makes detached limbs and coagulated purple blood downright charming."
"A funny and original take on the zombie genre."
"Adam Lewis Schroeder (The Empress of Asia; In the Fabled East; Kingdom of Monkeys) is one of Canada's great storytellers: engaging, witty, surprising. Schroeder credits his love of comics (The Walking Dead) for this surprise of a book -- a wild ride through zombie-land. So fasten your seatbelts for All-Day Breakfast, a long, strange trip through the deep weirdness of the American heartland...Schroeder's stylish zombie tale pretty well guarantees eye-popping outrageousness: All-Day Breakfast is a gross, hilarious, bacon-y pleasure."
"...highly literary in its style and approach to events, though -- it’s the Canadian equivalent of DeLillo's White Noise and its Airborne Toxic Event."
"...author's generously gory novel is coated in satire..."