The Dead Father's Club

by Matt Haig, Andrew Dennis (Narrated by)

Overview

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 before his dad's birthday, just ten weeks away, his dad's spirit will never rest. So begins Philip's quest to avenge his dad and to save his mum from the greasy clutches of Uncle Alan, who seems intent on taking his dad's place in their lives. But Philip finds himself both uneasy of his mission and distrustful of the ghost that claims to be his father. Plus, he's distracted by Leah Polonius, the gorgeous daughter of Uncle Alan's Bible-bashing business partner. What's a young lad to do? The Dead Fathers Club gives more than a nod towards Hamlet. Hilarious and unpredictable, The Dead Father's Club is full of poignant insights into the strange workings of the world as seen through the eyes of a child.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781598870879
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	02/28/2007
Edition description:	Unabridged; 6.75 hours on 6 CDs
Pages:	420
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 5.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

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Read an Excerpt

The First Time I Saw Dad After He Died

I walked down the hall and pushed the door and went into the smoke and all the voices went quiet like I was the ghost.

Carla the Barmaid was wearing her hoop earrings and her tired eyes. She was pouring a pint and she smiled at me and she was going to say something but the beer spilt over the top.

Uncle Alan who is Dads brother was there wearing his suit that was tight with his neck pouring over like the beer over the glass. His big hands still had the black on them from mending cars at the Garage. They were over Mums hands and Mums head was low like it was sad and Uncle Alans head kept going down and he lifted Mums head up with his eyes. He kept talking to Mum and he looked at me for a second and he saw me but he didnt say anything. He just looked back at Mum and kept pouring his words that made her forget about Dad.

Nan was sitting on her own with her silver sticks on the seat and she was drinking red juice like blood in her glass.

Her eyes went in a squint and made her face more wrinkly and she saw me. Her skeleton hand said Come here come here so I went and sat with her and she just stared at me and didnt say anything at first. She just looked round at everyone and went Sssss because of her pains like she had a puncture.

After a bit she said Ee now come on pet dinny you fret. It will be all right son.

Nan lives in Sunderland and she speaks Sunderlanguage. Mum used to live in Sunderland but she hates it and says it is a Ghost Town and she doesnt talk Sunderlanguage only a bit when she talks to Nan but most of the time she talks normal.

Nan said Youre not a little bairn now son. Youre the man of the place.

I am 11 so I am not a little bairn and I am not a man but I didnt say anything I just nodded my head a bit and Carla came and gave me a glass of Pepsi.

Carla said in her croaky frog voice Theres a glass of Pepsi duck. She put it on the table and smiled at me with her thin lips and she itched the dryness on her arm and then smiled at Nan and she went back to the bar.

Nan kept on saying things and I just drank my Pepsi and looked round at the people. I think most of them were happy that the Pub was open and they were talking louder than at the funeral because funerals make voices quiet and beer makes voices loud so now they were speaking about normal.

The Regulars were there like Big Vic and Les who were at the bar and smoking Hamlet cigars and speaking to Carla.

Carla always talked to men since her Divorce and since she stopped falling over and getting the bruises. Mum used to tell Dad she thought Carla was an Old Tart but she liked her really. I dont know if Carla is older than Mum because she has twins in my Year at school but she looks older than Mum.

Les didnt look happy but Les never looks happy and that is why Dad always called him Les Miserable. And when I was looking at them Big Vic looked at me and normally when he looked at me he smiled or said something funny like Oi Philip its your round. But that day he looked away as soon as his eyes touched my eyes as if looking at my eyes could be dangerous or make him ill or as if my eyes had lasers in them that cut him in half.

I moved my eyes and watched Mum and Uncle Alan and I wanted Uncle Alans hands to stop holding Mums hands and they did stop when Renuka went and talked to Mum. Renuka is Mums best friend who goes to Step class with her on Mondays and Thursdays where they step on boxes for an hour to make their bums smaller. Renuka had been with Mum lots this week and she had made 700 cups of tea and Uncle Alan looked cross now because when Renuka talks no one can fit words in because she doesnt have any spaces.

I kept looking round the bar and Nan kept talking to me and that is when I saw him. That is when I saw Dads Ghost.

Reading Group Guide

1. How does the lack of punctuation affect your reading experience?

2. Fish are repeatedly featured in the book whether its Philip's description of Joshua Harper's "fish eyes", Uncle Alan's love of fishing or Philip's pet guppies and angel fish. Why do you think the fish are so important to the story?

3. Make up features heavily in the descriptions of Philip's mum Carol. What is she trying to cover up? Or is it just her protection against the world?

4. Mrs Fell explains to Philip that "you must be able to separate the things that are real from the things that are not real" (p.55). How easy is this to do in the novel?

5. "You can listen to ghosts or you can not listen to ghosts" (p.309). Why does Philip choose to listen to his ghost?

6. "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so" (Hamlet, Act 2 Scene 2). Like Hamlet, Philip is continually questioning what is right and what is wrong. Does he find the answer in the end?

7. How did Philip's father really die? Was it murder, suicide or just an accident?

8. Leah says "I hate God… Because he says you cant do things like you cant steal. But he steals. He steals people." (p.88) How does Leah's grief differ from Philip's? Is Philip's stealing - the minibus, the chemical from the school, the Nivea Anti Ageing Eye Cream from Boots - a manifestation of his grief?

9. Other themes to focus your discussion around: Revenge, Bullying, Mental Illness, History, Fathers, Clocks and time, Hamlet.

Editorial Reviews

Humorous and original. This is one of those crossover books like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.—Daily Mail

From the Publisher

Twelve-year-old British narrator Dennis turns in a superlative performance. . . . He pours emotion into every sentence. Dennis (speaking as [the protagonist] Philip) observes and reports on the obvious and the miniscule in this unexpectedly amusing novel. —Booklist

Booklist

Dennis performs with a skill beyond his years.—Audiofile

Audiofile

Humorous and original. This is one of those crossover books like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.—Daily Mail

Daily Mail

The Barnes & Noble Review from Discover Great New Writers
Philip Noble is 11. His dad has just perished in a car accident, and his uncle is acting a bit too friendly with Philip's newly widowed mom. To make matters worse, Philip's dad keeps making appearances (as a ghost), informing him of the truth about ghosts (they have all been murdered), and demanding that Philip avenge his death. However, the prescribed vengeance must be taken in "No Time," or his father's ghost will continue to suffer "the Terrors" and never find rest.

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. (Spring 2007 Selection)

Haig (The Last Family in England) creatively reanimates themes from Hamlet with an 11-year-old British protagonist who is commissioned to avenge his father's murder. After Philip Noble passes his hand through his father's flickering spirit at the funeral, Dad reveals the truth: it was conniving auto mechanic Uncle Alan who orchestrated the automobile "accident" that claimed his life, and Philip must kill Uncle Alan by dead Dad's next birthday-barely 11 weeks away-or he'll be consumed forever by the Terrors. Time is fleeting, however, as repugnant Uncle Alan has already begun to put the moves on Philip's mother and has taken over the family pub's operations. In animated, adolescent prose, Philip, goaded on by his father's ghost, plots his uncle's murder. Besides the time-sensitive obligation, Philip must also contend with the slings and arrows of adolescent life: friends, girls, meddling schoolteachers, bullies and peer pressure. The plucky hero impressively navigates the gloomy, pungent waters of retribution, death and guilt, and Haig does an enviable job of leavening a sad premise through the words and actions of a charming, resilient young man. (Feb.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Phillip Noble's father is killed in a car accident, and suddenly Uncle Alan is hanging around Phillip's mother. It isn't long before the ghost of Phillip's dad appears and tells the 11 year old that the death was no accident. The ghost also tells Phillip about the dead fathers club, whose members are doomed to an eternity of terrors because their murders were never avenged. The only solution is for Phillip to murder his uncle before his father's next birthday. Unsure of what to do, Phillip rents a DVD, The Murder of Gonzago: A Brother's Murder, a Son's Revenge, to see how his uncle reacts. Haig (The Last Family in England) neatly sustains the Hamlet parallel, giving Phillip a girlfriend named Leah whose father is a bit meddlesome and revealing Phillip's uncertainty about whether to believe the ghost. Yet Phillip is no prince-in fact, he's a bumbling boy-and unlike Hamlet's father, this ghost hangs around quite a bit. What makes this work effective is that the narrative captures the anxiety of a timid boy, ridiculed by everyone, who must decide whether and how to kill his charismatic uncle. Hamlet never faced such difficulties. Recommended.-Joshua Cohen, Mid-Hudson Lib. Syst., Poughkeepsie, NY Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Literary influence is neatly reconfigured in the English author's second novel (after The Last Family in England, 2005), in which an 11-year-old schoolboy is commanded to seek revenge by the ghost of his murdered father. "Dad's ghost" appears to Philip Noble, not on the battlements at Elsinore, but at the family-operated Castle and Falcon Pub, where mourners gather following his funeral. The spirit explains that his apparently accidental death in a car crash was in fact engineered by Philip's paternal Uncle Alan, an auto-dealer who has designs on Philip's now conveniently widowed Mum. Dad's ghost also explains the unhappy fellowship of the title group, whose members hover, unavenged and restless, between the dead and the living-while spurring the reluctant Philip to action, evoking from the boy reactions that astound his family, teachers and schoolmates, and even the forthright older girl (Leah), who matter-of-factly declares him her boyfriend. An act of violence (though not the one intended) ensues, and the embattled Philip-whose unpunctuated, edgy narration is an utter delight-even does some hasty growing up. Haig rather overworks the pattern of carefully spaced allusions to Hamlet (e.g., mischief-making tins Ross and Gary; pronouncing the wonderfully slimy Uncle Alan a "smiling damned villain"). But there are nice characterizations of Philip's Mum (so needing to be loved that she's blind to her brother-in-law's stratagems) and his sympathetic teacher Mrs. Fell, whose practiced niceness does not cloud her keen understanding of boyish bravado and secrecy. The author also makes effective use of the image of Hadrian's Wall (which occasions a class trip and essay subject) and to itsreputation as a barrier between civilization and savagery. As such, it also embodies Philip's quite credible vacillations between obedience and moral choice. We now owe another debt to Shakespeare, and one to Haig, for re-imagining a tragic masterpiece with such wit, force and-yes-originality.

Kirkus Reviews