Carol Suzzane Noble– Mother of Phillip, Carol marries Alan and is unaware of the presence of Brian’s ghost. Phillip cares a lot for his mother, who is one of his only last sources of comfort. But Phillip gets distracted by a girl, Leah, and some bullies in his classroom, and in the end, even by some diazepam pills prescribed by his doctor after a few unfortunate attempts to follow his father's ghost's instructions. The story is interesting, but at a certain point I'm like "Come on. He can't expect an 11 year old to kill his uncle! I mean not REALLY!" Once I twice I doubt the realness of the ghost but then there is such heavy evidence to the fact that the ghost is real, it doesn't even bother me that Phillip doesnt' really try and tell anyone. It begins with the death of Phillips father, shortly followed by the appearance of his ghost saying that Phillip's uncle killed his father and Phillip must take revenge. Phillip tests the truth of this the same way Hamlet does, only with a DVD instead of personally directed play. 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.

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 The boy kills a man. Definitely not something I would want my kids to read about. Murder by arson. There are also many attempted murder plots throughout the book. In your opinion, how important is it to your readers’ enjoyment that they have read or reread Hamlet recently? In Haig’s magnificent updating of Hamlet, Philip, an English schoolboy, must decide whether to listen to the ghost of his father and to murder the uncle who is making the moves on his mother. . . . Haig’s prose is light and humorous and sprinkled with allusions to the Bard, even as his topic turns dark and menacing. Arsen Kashkashian of The Boulder Book Store, Colorado store (Book Sense) in the Seattle Post A. Not through research, so I guess it was personal experience. I grew up in Newark-on-Trent, and went to a school like Philip’s, so it was relatively easy to conjure that world. And as I was a rather anxious eleven-year-old I drew a lot from my own feelings from that time.

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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

On his teacher trying to involve him with his peers by making him dance at a party: “Mrs Fell was only being nice because she thought I was on my own but sometimes being nice is as bad as being horrible.” With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally dazzling sequels. This is meant to be a modern take on Hamlet from my understanding, and maybe my issue is that I just don't enjoy retellings. I couldn't really get the plot with this one; are ghosts actually real in this world or was Phillip just lost in the throes of grief. He's meant to be 11 but his POV just reads as a lot younger. Did Alan kill his father? Who the hell knows, it's never made clear and by the end of the book Alan is in deep water himself (pun intended). Lots of swearing, the "F" word repeatedly. Even uses the ultimate taboo "C" word about four times. Other less offensive baddies here too. Nothing I would want my kids to hear.The main character walks in on his mother and his uncle doing the jim jam (if you catch my drift) and it is described in horrific unsettling detail. Nothing I would want my kids to read. 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 In the chapter titled “Slaves,” Philip observes that true freedom is unattainable. He suggests that, so long as human beings remain in their bodies, they are subject to constraints that at times become almost intolerable. Do you have additional thoughts on the problem of human freedom, in your novel or elsewhere? We now owe another debt to Shakespeare, and one to Haig, for re-imagining a tragic masterpiece with such wit, force, and-yes-originality.”

Plot in a nutshell: This is a British hip-hop retelling of Hamlet, an effort you may not have realized you needed until you see it. Author reminds me of: Dave Eggers. Best reason to read: If he weren’t so literary, Haig could have a future in the gothic world. His scenes with Dads Ghost are genuinely frightening — and they’re interspersed with funny and poignant insights of adolescent love and loss. Matt Haig has an empathy for the human condition, the light and the dark of it, and he uses the full palette to build his excellent stories.”―NEIL GAIMAN Q.Do the ideas for your stories come first – and the link to Shakespeare later – or do you have a conscious project to recast Shakespeare for the modern age? Phillip is encouraged by his deceased father to steal a mini-bus to supposedly prevent Alan from breaking into the pub and is shown several chemicals that could potentially kill his father's murderer. During this time Phillip is assigned to therapy sessions and begins a relationship with Leah, the daughter of a business partner in the garage Alan works at, which Brian does not approve of. My 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!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.

It’s shortly after this that the ghost of Philip’s father comes to him and says that his brother, Alan, murdered him by severing the brakes on his car. Along with this news, a few other things: 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?The Dead Father's Club' is full of dark humour, Philip's thoughts on life are innocent and humorous, and his confusion about his Dad is heartbreaking, he is trying to cope with the loss of his Dad and his Dad's ghost at the same time. As with a lot of Matt Haig's writing, he manages to lay bare human emotion, and put it into relateable sentences. Leah later goes missing and Phillip seeks the assistance of other ghosts to find her. Leah is discovered as she is preparing to jump off a bridge, the words "dead and gone" written on her arms in blood. Despite Phillip’s pleas, she jumps and Phillip jumps in after her in an attempt to rescue her. The pair are swept along the water, but are pulled out by Alan and one of his coworkers. Philip observes, “If you speak to yourself people think you are mad but if you write the same things they think you are clever.” Discuss examples from life or literature that bear out this observation on the nature of madness and intelligence. at times funny, dark and very sad. . .The author expertly navigates through the murky waters of pre-teen life with scenes that ring true to life. And the first-person narrative by the young protagonist offers incredible insight into a boy’s life after his father dies.