Rating: 5/5
Review:
Another excellent book from Matt Haig
I thought The Dead Fathers Club was excellent. It's a very well-done reworking of Hamlet
through the eyes of Philip, an 11-year-old boy whose father has been killed in
a road accident, leaving his mother to run their pub in Newark,
Nottinghamshire. Uncle Alan, his
father's brother has designs on both his mother and the pub and Philip's father
appears as a ghost, telling him that Alan arranged the crash and demanding that
Philip exact revenge.
I found the whole thing gripping, insightful and
touching. Philip's narrative voice is
completely believable, as is the story with events and characters recognisable
from Hamlet but very cleverly adapted to Philip's modern-day school and home
life. Haig doesn't follow the play
slavishly (so we are spared the corpse-strewn finale, for example) but its
themes and insights are there, including the question of whether Philip really
is seeing the things he describes or whether they are the product of a
disturbed mind.
In short, this is another excellently written, engrossing
and very humane book from Matt Haig.
Very warmly recommended.
(My thanks to Canongate Books for an ARC via NetGalley.)
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