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). 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 strange 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, he craves bacon, not brains. But normal people don’t put their bodies back together with staple guns and thumb tacks, 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 hilarious.
Bridging history from 1890s Aix-en-Provence to American involvement in 1950s Vietnam, In the Fabled East is a timeless love story and riveting adventure, charting the loss of innocence of both individuals and the world at large. Adélie Tremier, a turn-of-the-century widower and socialite suffering from tuberculosis, flees Paris flees for French-occupied Indochina, to seek out a fabled spring of immortality in the Laotian jungle that might allow her to return to her nine-year-old son. Years later, Pierre Lazarie, a young academic turned Saigon bureaucrat, is sent by Adélie's grown son, now an army captain, to find this mysterious woman. Although his mission fulfills Pierre’s fantasy to travel up the exotic Mekong, he is saddled with his colleague Henri LeDallic, who would rather glory in booze and his loutish past than hunt for ghosts. This mismatched pair stumbles through the lush jungle in the faded footsteps of Adelie, where history and fable are intertwined.
A sweeping epic story of heart-wrenching love and wartime adventure, Empress of Asia introduces a stunning young talent hailed as the next great Canadian writer The year is 1942, and the world is engulfed by war. Young Canadian seaman Harry Winslow has just arrived in Singapore after the bombing of his ship, the Empress of Asia. One night in the ravaged city, Harry meets and falls madly in love with a vivacious young Englishwoman named Lily. After a hasty marriage, they are separated during the confusion of an air raid. Harry begins a desperate search for Lily across the Dutch East Indies, enduring hunger, illness, and unimaginable cruelty before finally being reunited with his wife. Many years later, in Canada, Harry sits at Lily's bedside. In her dying moments, Lily reveals an astonishing secret: She gives him the address of Michel Ney, a man who saved Harry's life before being killed by the Japanese during the war--or so Harry had always believed. Can Lily be in contact with a man she never met, and why does she insist on Harry's reunion with him now? Fifty years later after the wartime events that changed his life forever, Harry travels to Thailand to begin the final adventure of his life--to retrace the journey of his Empress of Asia and to uncover the mystery that lies at the heart of the love of his life. A powerful story peopled with unforgettable characters, Empress of Asia is a stirring chronicle of love and loss, of loyalty and betrayal, amidst the turbulence of war.
Charting the steamy jungles and murky depths of the South Seas, these stories dip into the lives of a Malay boy in 19th century Singapore, a Dutch painter in wartime Bali, and an opium-smoking porter in northern Thailand. In a brilliant reworking of Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Coppola's Apocalypse Now, the closing novella tracks a martyr to his lair and reveals Kurtz alive and well and living among us. Cunningly exposing the tattered vestiges of colonial power in Asia, Schroeder reinvents the exotic, the exquisite, and the exiled. "Schroeder has a light, lucid touch; he resists ... heavy-handed condemnation of Western consumerism and ... goggle-eyed promotion of Eastern mysticism." -- Quill & Quire (Starred Review) "The texture and scents and colors -- the otherness -- of Indonesia, the Philippines, even 19th-century Singapore, shimmer on the page." -- Globe and Mail
Bridging history from 1890s Aix-en-Provence to American involvement in 1950s Vietnam, In the Fabled East is a timeless love story and riveting adventure, charting the loss of innocence of both individuals and the world at large. Adélie Tremier, a turn-of-the-century widower and socialite suffering from tuberculosis, flees Paris flees for French-occupied Indochina, to seek out a fabled spring of immortality in the Laotian jungle that might allow her to return to her nine-year-old son. Years later, Pierre Lazarie, a young academic turned Saigon bureaucrat, is sent by Adélie's grown son, now an army captain, to find this mysterious woman. Although his mission fulfills Pierre’s fantasy to travel up the exotic Mekong, he is saddled with his colleague Henri LeDallic, who would rather glory in booze and his loutish past than hunt for ghosts. This mismatched pair stumbles through the lush jungle in the faded footsteps of Adelie, where history and fable are intertwined.
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). 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 strange 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, he craves bacon, not brains. But normal people don’t put their bodies back together with staple guns and thumb tacks, 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 hilarious.
A sweeping epic story of heart-wrenching love and wartime adventure, "Empress of Asia "introduces a stunning young talent hailed as the next great Canadian writer" The year is 1942, and the world is engulfed by war. Young Canadian seaman Harry Winslow has just arrived in Singapore after the bombing of his ship, the "Empress of Asia." One night in the ravaged city, Harry meets and falls madly in love with a vivacious young Englishwoman named Lily. After a hasty marriage, they are separated during the confusion of an air raid. Harry begins a desperate search for Lily across the Dutch East Indies, enduring hunger, illness, and unimaginable cruelty before finally being reunited with his wife. Many years later, in Canada, Harry sits at Lily's bedside. In her dying moments, Lily reveals an astonishing secret: She gives him the address of Michel Ney, a man who saved Harry's life before being killed by the Japanese during the war--or so Harry had always believed. Can Lily be in contact with a man she never met, and why does she insist on Harry's reunion with him now? Fifty years later after the wartime events that changed his life forever, Harry travels to Thailand to begin the final adventure of his life--to retrace the journey of his Empress of Asia and to uncover the mystery that lies at the heart of the love of his life. A powerful story peopled with unforgettable characters, "Empress of Asia" is a stirring chronicle of love and loss, of loyalty and betrayal, amidst the turbulence of war.
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