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). I found this book in the kids section of the library. It is about a 11 year old boy, so it stands to reason. Here are the things I found in the book: *SPOILERS* 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.” Turns out a British narrator and friend who had just judged a BBC-sponsored competition to find “the Young Voice of Bath” recommended the winner, Andrew Dennis, who just happened to be 12. On the paradox of war and murder: “Its like how in War soldiers are told to kill other men and then they are Heroes but if they killed the same men when they were not in War they are Murderers. But they are still killing the same men who have the same dreams and who chew the same food and hum the same songs when they are happy but if it is called War it is all right because that is the rules of War.”

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 reimagined 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? The book is written in first person train of thought. Haig follows this trend to the letter. There is no punctuation save the period which is even sometimes avoided creating long run ons. AT first it is neat, then it is annoying, then tiresome, and then addictive and you find yourself copying it. I was wondering if he'd be able to pull it off for a whole book. He does. 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: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!" A. In 1999, when I was living in Spain, I was prescribed diazepam for anxiety, but I didn’t get better until I stopped taking them.

The Dead Fathers Club is a 2006 novel by Matt Haig. The book was published in the United Kingdom by Jonathan Cape and in the United States by Viking Press. The story is a retelling of William Shakespeare's Hamlet, and thus an example of intertextuality.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. 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?