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. 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. Many of Haig’s characters, including Uncle Alan (Claudius), Philip’s mother (Gertrude), Leah (Ophelia), and Ross and Gary (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern) have clear parallels in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Nevertheless, these characters have been re-imagined with traits and motivations that distinguish them from their Shakespearean models. Choose a character from The Dead Fathers Club and reread the scenes involving that character’s counterpart in Hamlet. How has Haig altered the character? What do you think of these changes?

Matt’s writing style is unusually down-to-earth and he prides himself on penning novels that appeal to different generations. Grant Woodward, Yorkshire Evening Post 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

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.” 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 The Dead Fathers Club is an incredibly funny, imaginative, and quirky update of Hamlet that will appeal to fans of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and establish Matt Haig as a young writer of great talent. 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? Then at the end, there is a sudden rebuking of this, or is there? This is the thing. I don't know what to make of the ending of this book. I certainly expected more, or least a definite out come. There are many ways to interpret this and finish it off in your head, something Haig leaves completely up to you. In some ways I find it disappointing, in other ways clever. Mostly I just want to know what happened, really.

So when producer Paul Ruben was pondering who should narrate a story told in the voice of an 11-year-old boy, he went for the real thing. 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... What is the most useful way to understand the spirit that we come to know as Philip’s father’s ghost? Should he be thought of as a character, as an embodiment of Philip’s anxieties, as a demonic presence, or as something else? Why does Philip trust him for so long?

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Eleven-year-old Philip Noble has a big problem. His dad has appeared to him as a member of the Dead Fathers Club, a club for "ghost dads" whose murders are unavenged. His father's road accident, it turns out, was no accident at all. Uncle Alan is responsible for his dad's death, and if Philip doesn't succeed in killing his uncle just before his dad's birthday, just 10 weeks away, his dad's spirit will never rest. 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. If Hamlet were 11, he might write this. What I liked about this book, The Dead Fathers Club by Matt Haig, is that although it’s what they call an adult novel it is written just like an 11-year-old kid talks. I am not English like the boy in the book, Philip Noble, and I am a little bit older – 12 – but I can understand him very well. . .It’s good and it doesn’t sound like a grown-up trying to be a kid . . . Roger K Miller, Philadelphia Inquirer