From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. 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 © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* What happens when you die? Well, if you're murdered, you become a ghost, as 11-year-old Philip learns when he sees his dead father for the first time at the man's wake. Things start to get sticky when Dad then asks Philip to kill his killer, the boy's oily uncle, Alan, who has designs on both Mum
and the family pub, the Castle and Falcon. Uncle Alan, it seems, wants to become king of the Castle in his late brother's stead. Poor bewildered, indecisive Philip. To kill or not to kill--that is the question that comes to haunt him. British author Haig's darkly witty and delightfully clever American debut (his first novel,
The Last Family in England, was published in the UK in 2004) is clearly inspired by Shakespeare's
Hamlet, and part of the fun for the reader is discovering the many droll and unforced parallels. But the real draw is the extraordinary voice that Haig has created for his first-person narrator. Given to panic attacks, Philip is a breathless storyteller who seldom stops for punctuation but whose honesty and innocence, which shine from every sentence, are utterly captivating and heartbreakingly poignant. The result is an absolutely irresistible read.
Michael CartCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
