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! 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. Nan– She is a minor character that is the mother of Phillip’s mother. She is disapproving of Carol’s precocious marriage to Alan.

This meant having absolutely no life for four months, living on cereal and toast, getting through pens at a rate of one a day, and having surreal dreams about tropical fish and Roman Emperors.

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. A breathless see-saw between indecision and drama, between dark comedy and poignancy. Utterly compelling to its unpredictable climax, you won’t want to come up for air. Eve Magazine

Enlivening this remarkable novel from start to finish is the narrative voice of Philip himself. Lonely, misunderstood, but thoughtful beyond his years, Philip struggles to express his complex fears of both life and death in the journal that his school counselor encourages him to keep. As Matt Haig leads us to question the motives of Philip’s family and friends, as well as the true nature of Philip’s father’s ghost, he gradually evolves a brilliant contradictory portrait of his central character. Is he precociously philosophical or pathetically mad? Is he a foolish boy, or a fount of strange forbidden wisdom? Must he follow Hamlet’s destiny to the bitter end, or will he summon the courage to regain control of his fate? Not until the shattering conclusion do the deep mysteries of the story become clear. Philip grossly misjudges the people around him and, because he tells the story, we view these people only from his misguided perspective. Nevertheless, by some miracle of narration, we are able to see them more or less as they are: as somewhat limited but basically well-meaning human beings. How does Haig manage both to immerse us in Philip’s point of view and give us an objective understanding of his other characters? 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 Funny, tragic (and very British), Matt Haig has written a delightful and poignant novel, told in the voice of an 11 year old boy who is trying to process the death of his father as he also endeavors to grow up. Full of surprising and intricate language as well as fascinating plot twists, this is a story for all types of readers. Karen Frank, Northshire Bookstore Vermont As with a lot of Matt Haig's writing, he manages to lay bare human emotion, and put it into relateable sentences.This is a very impressive novel; it’s being published as mainstream (and the Hamlet parallels throw it solidly into the literary-novel category rather than genre fantasy), but anyone with a passing familiarity with the plot of Hamlet could read it with great appreciation. Whatever you call it, it will be one of the major fantasy novels of 2007; it’s that good. Andrew Wheeler, senior editor at the Science Fiction Book Club How might Philip’s mental disturbances be influenced by matters relating to sexuality, for example, his recent circumcision, his attraction toward his mother, and his ambivalent feelings about Leah? Q. The Dead Fathers Club made me think of the psychiatrist R.D. Laing, who argued that when people seem to be ‘mad,’ they’re just articulating underlying worries and anxieties that they are prevented, by circumstance or convention, from articulating normally. Would you agree that Philip’s madness (like Hamlet’s) is a kind of coping mechanism? 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 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.

I'm going to keep this review short because I just generally don't have much to say about this book. It was odd and that is my general overall view of it; I literally cannot explain the experience of reading this book without using the word odd. There are no speech marks so everything just flows on and its hard to tell at times what is speech and what isn't. But the ultimate clincher was that the narrator was very unreliable. I dislike these types of plots (A Beautiful Mind, Secret Window) because the writer spends so much time setting up support for the main premise and then screams "Fooled ya!"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... Haig is one of the most inspirational popular writers on mental health of our age.”― Independent (London) A. I wouldn’t say I was consciously trying to write a certain way, but yes, I do feel that a lot of writers underestimate teenage readers. Teenagers are among the best kind of readers, because they have the intelligence to understand big ideas, combined with that open-mindedness you tend to shed with age. 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.