The Shakespearean roots of Haig’s book don’t force the plot into preordained directions. No characters are wasted; Leah, the Ophelia to Phillip’s Hamlet, emerges as a mysterious but moving force. One of the joys (for those familiar with Hamlet) is figuring out at what points Haig’s work diverges. Phillip is an unreliable narrator, but it isn’t until close to the ending that you begin to wonder just how unreliable. Maybe Uncle Alan isn’t such a bad guy … Haig does a great job of assuming the voice of an 11-year-old. The advantage of writing through a child’s eyes is that the events play themselves out in a less self-conscious way than, say, an account of adult grief. Through Phillip, and the struggles Phillip has with his father’s ghost, we see the cruelty of death, the desire to make sense out of an nonsensical event. “The Dead Fathers Club” is full of funny moments, but the ending reveals the dark heart of Hamlet’s story. Reyhan Harmanci, San Francisco Chronicle

I selected this book because the idea and the voice interested me. The cover boast that it is kind of like a modern day Hamlet adn in a lot of ways it is. 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. Matt Haig’s prose is quirky, with no apostrophes, liberal use of capital letters, and some creative typesetting. He captures Philip’s young voice with its innocence and acceptance of a new reality. . . Haig has a deft descriptive touch. A church “smelt of God which is the smell of old paper.” When Philip reluctantly answers Uncle Alan, “In an invisible ice cube out of my mouth I said Yes.”. . . a poignant, original, often charming story of a boy struggling in sorrow and misery with all his heart. Marilyn Dahl, Shelf Awareness 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? The conversation I would love to have with Matt Haig, author of The Dead Fathers Club.* We would be sitting in a small diner drinking our hot beverage of choice.

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What the child's perspective does, however, is bring the family power struggles to the fore. Uncle Alan attempts to worm his way into Philip's affections and his mother's bed; suspected of boiling Philip's tropical fish, he is alluring and frightening by turns, a figure of threat overspilling with treats and bribes. The pub itself, with its staff and regulars (Ross and Gary are a pair of particularly sinister Rosencrantz and Guildenstern doppelgangers), becomes a palace of whispering intrigue and conspiracy, as dangerous as any Elsinore. The child's perspective also brings out the absurd comedy of Shakespeare's tragedy; most of all it allows Haig to indulge his innocently acute eye for detail and his delightfully weird imagination. One's heart goes out to a boy torn between a selfish ghost ("If you ever loved me . . .") and a foolish mother, and one naturally fears for him, knowing the fate of the first Hamlet. But Haig borrows from Shakespeare in the same spirit that Shakespeare borrowed from his own sources. One is never sure where the story is going next, and that's what makes this book such sad fun. 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.

Ho trovato davvero fastidiosa anche la banalizzazione di problematiche e disagi come la salute meIn 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 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... 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.”