The Dead Fathers Club: Matt Haig

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In the prose style of your novel, as well as in its concern for the inner reflections of a troubled youth, some readers may catch echoes of Burgess and Sillitoe. Apart, obviously, from Shakespeare, whom do you look upon as the major literary influences on this book? With Phillip, it's explored in much more detail - grief, resentment, inability to act, the sense of isolation - it's all there, in gloriously modern terms. What's also utterly magnificent is the possibility that the father's ghost doesn't exist at all - and that Phillip is suffering some sort of mental breakdown after losing a loved one. This puts a totally fresh spin on things, which I thought was really clever. It made me start wondering - what if that was the case in the original Hamlet? What if Claudius was actually totally innocent? Thought provoking stuff! Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings ( A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants. Cleverly constructed narrative convinces the reader that this is a young child relating, explaining and describing both major and trivial incidents in his life. If you enjoyed The Sixth Sense you’ll find this book compulsive reading. It offers some pertinent observations about the human condition . . . be prepared for a highly dramatic conclusion.

It’s a playful manhandling of Hamlet, and it works: The more you read, the more captivating it becomes. Philip is funny, vulnerable and resolute as he tries to shake off his grief and save his beloved dad from the Terrors and his mom from Uncle Alan. We suspect the Bard would be pleased. Anne Stephensen, The Arizona Republic One of the greatest challenges a writer faces is sustaining a narrative voice that differs from his or her own natural mode of expression. How were you able to think your way so successfully into the mind and diction of an eleven-year-old boy? Even though, as the author, you possess the ultimate power to “change the story,” you have chosen to give your novel an ending that many readers may not feel is an optimistic one. How did you come to this particular ending for the book? And then they went into the office and shut the door and I could hear nothing for ages and then I heard Mum. She was howling like a WOLF and the noise hurt my stomach and I closed my eyes to try and hear the policeman and all he was saying was Im sorry and he kept on saying it

Matt Haig

Nan– She is a minor character that is the mother of Phillip’s mother. She is disapproving of Carol’s precocious marriage to Alan. His girlfriend Leah is the only one who doesn't think he's a weirdo - until, of course, Phillip does something unspeakable to her father. What follows next is a potential recipe for tragedy - though with a rather different ending to the Shakespearean text (I won't give it away). Moreover, Philip is so adamant on killing his uncle Alan, he looks for all the negatives from him - whilst hurting others in the process. And when he finally has remorse and regret, it is too late. F. Scott Fitzgerald said when he wrote he felt like he was holding his breath and swimming under water. With The Dead Fathers Club it was certainly written at quite a breathless, intense level, and came from a place I can’t easily locate. But once I had the voice, it was there and I was able to see everything through Philip’s eyes. Philip is a breathless storyteller who seldom stops for punctuation but whose honesty and innocence, which shine from every sentence, are utterly captivating and heartbreakingly poignant. The result is an absolutely irresistible read. Booklist (starred review)

Again with most of my rereads I enjoyed the book more second time around. The story is based loosely on `Hamlet' by William Shakespeare with the main character Philip Noble faced with his Dad's ghost telling him that was not killed in a car accident but he was murdered by his brother and Philip's Uncle, Alan who according to his Dad's ghost tampered with the brakes of the car causing the accident. Haig cleverly reinvents this 400-year-old tragedy as a 21st-century morality tale inhabited by schoolchildren, barmaids and mechanics, and it’s fun to look for the parallels between the two works. . . The story’s greatest strength, however, is Philip’s perspective as narrator. Haig effectively runs Philip’s words and thoughts together with an economy of punctuation, spliced with details that a child would notice, to create the voice of an anxious child. . . The Dead Father’s Club has much to recommend it, especially in how it shows the adult world through the eyes of an innocent. . . . It’s still the dark tale of Hamlet, perhaps more disturbing because it is related by an adolescent. It’s ingenious. Susan Kelly, USA Today Gender isn’t too much of a problem. But youth is, especially for a male. A woman can imitate a young voice fairly easily, but few men can regress to a time before their voices changed. Phillip is taken to the hospital where he discovers a news article that suggests that his father's ghost was lying. Phillip's father is still visible and still attempts to persuade Phillip to murder Alan, who chooses not to listen to his father. Alan eventually dies due to injuries sustained from Phillip's rescue, but it is left unclear as to whether Brian's ghost was saved from the terrors or was simply a figment of Phillip’s imagination.We now owe another debt to Shakespeare, and one to Haig, for re-imagining a tragic masterpiece with such wit, force and – yes – originality. Kirkus Review (starred review)

The Dead Fathers Club is a wholly unusual reworking of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. But the Hamlet parallels — complete with similar plot twists — are worked in so deftly that the reader never quite anticipates where the book will go next. Readers see the world, surprising and strange, through Philip’s eyes. It’s a tangled web of murder and lies, with a boy caught in the middle, trying to make sense of it all. The result is a confused yet perceptive narrator whose responses to the world he inhabits are darkly humorous and sometimes tragic. Haig’s novel reads at a breathless pace (assisted by the absence of commas and apostrophes), his first-person narrative credibly that of a young British boy who takes things at face value. The result is a mysterious and engrossing book for both older children and adults — neither of which will be able to put it down. The Barnes & Noble Review from Discover Great New Writers, Spring 2007 Selection We follow the narration from Phillip's point of view. There are no punctuation signs, as one could expect from a boy of that age, and Phillip's inner thoughts are hilarious sometimes, as well as his mental processes of what's happening. We see his struggle between trying to save his father's ghost from some eternal terrors, with the imposed deadline of his father's birthday, which is the last day to kill him and complete his revenge, and the fact that he doesn't really know if he wants to kill his uncle. Phillip's Dad, a former pub landlord, has recently died in a car-crash. Except (like Hamlet's father), he's refusing to die quietly. Instead, he starts haunting Phillip, telling him that he's part of the 'dead father's club' - men who have been murdered and who are seeking vengeance. A. I’ve got a children’s book, Shadow Forest, due out next year. It’s a fantasy book but in the Dahl rather than the Tolkien sense. I’m also working on another adult novel. The hilarious tale is full of poignant insights into the strange workings of the world seen through the eyes of a child. Hull Daily MailMy only minor niggle was that there were parts where I felt the boy's voice was a little 'young' for Year 7 (this is probably the ex-secondary school teacher in me, remembering what they're like at that age). However, this only jarred very slightly on occasion, and didn't bother me particularly. It's bloody hard writing from the perspective of a child, especially when covering high-impact, emotive issues! His dad, who was killed in a car accident, appears as a bloodstained ghost at his own funeral and introduces Philip to the Dead Fathers Club. The club, whose members were all murdered, gathers outside the Castle and Falcon, the local pub that Philip’s family owns and lives above. Philip learns that the person responsible for his father’s death is his Uncle Alan. When Philip realizes that Uncle Alan has designs on his mom and the family pub, Philip decides that something must be done. But avenging his father’s death is a much bigger job than he anticipated, especially when he is caught up by the usual distractions of childhood—a pretty girl, wayward friends, school bullies, and his own self-doubt. Where Matt Haig’s debut novel, The Last Family in England, was a superb reworking of Henry IV, Part I, Dead Fathers Club gives a gracious nod towards Hamlet. . . Matt Haig – one of the freshest talents in the UK at the moment – triumphs again. Steph Little, Brighton Argus I’m not a natural fan of authors who refuse to use apostrophes but Matt Haig’s Hamlet-esque Dead Fathers Club, narrated by an 11-year-old, somehow gains piquancy from it. This is the story of Philip, whose late dad appears as a ghost and tells the boy that he was murdered by Uncle Alan. Philip must now avenge him by killing Uncle Alan. And he has to do it before his father’s birthday in a few weeks, otherwise Dad’s ghost will be condemned to haunt the pub car park forever. Phil Hogan, The Observer stars rounded up. I love Matt Haig, I really do. This just isn't a favourite as far as his books are concerned. Actually I think it may have spoiled Hamlet for me a bit, which has always been one of my favourite Shakespeare plays. It's a lot more visceral to have the story told you by an eleven year old boy who is struggling with his father's death, than a privileged and somewhat pampered twenty-something prince. It made me quite sad, which bizarrely Hamlet never has before. It's more likely to be something wrong with me...