Haunted by Dad

When first-person narration is discussed in literary circles, the subject of unreliable narrators often crops up. Should you believe everything the narrator tells you or not?

In Matt Haig's 2006 novel The Dead Fathers Club, there is no question but that the narrator is unreliable. Philip Noble is just 11 years old, and how many 11-year-olds really understand everything that is going on around them? His father has just died in a traffic accident, making the boy emotionally unstable. As the story unfolds it appears Philip may have psychiatric problems in addition to the current stress.

Told in a stream-of-consciousness style, the story finds Philip haunted by his father's ghost. The ghost, part of a dead fathers club in the spirit world, tells Philip he was murdered by his brother because Uncle Alan wants both the boy's mother and the pub the dead man had owned and where Philip and his mother live. The ghost tells Philip he must kill Uncle Alan within 77 days.

Philip's struggles to obey his father's ghost against his own conscience. The fact that Uncle Alan quickly moves into his mother's bedroom and takes over management of the pub strengthens the boy's commitment to actually commit the murder. Yet how can an 11-year-old boy kill a man and get away with it?

Readers may find a hint of Shakespeare's Hamlet in this novel, yet Haig's work remains strikingly original.