Haig, Matt 1975-

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Haig, Matt 1975-

PERSONAL:

Born 1975. Education: Leeds University, M.A.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Leeds, England. Agent—Caradoc King, A.P. Watt, 20 John St., London WC1N 2DR, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer.

WRITINGS:

The Last Family in England, Jonathan Cape (London, England), 2004.

The Dead Fathers Club, Jonathan Cape (London, England), 2006, Viking (New York, NY), 2007.

Samuel Blink and the Forbidden Forest, Putnam (New York, NY), 2007.

Labrador Pact: A Novel, Viking (New York, NY), 2008.

Contributor to the Guardian, Sunday Times, Independent, and Sydney Morning Herald.

SIDELIGHTS:

The plot of The Dead Fathers Club, Matt Haig's first novel to be released in the United States, was inspired by William Shakespeare's Hamlet and shares a parallel story line: young Philip's recently murdered father has returned as a ghost to implore his son to kill the man who murdered him—his own brother. Michael Cart described the novel in a review for Booklist as "darkly witty and delightfully clever," with a protagonist "whose honesty and innocence, which shine from every sentence, are utterly captivating and heartbreakingly poignant." A Kirkus Reviews contributor lauded Haig for "re-imagining a tragic masterpiece with such wit, force and—yes—originality." Joshua Cohen, writing for Library Journal, found that Haig "neatly sustains the Hamlet parallel."

Haig's next work of fiction, Samuel Blink and the Forbidden Forest, takes aim at an audience of both children and adults. The story features a recently orphaned protagonist and his sister who have been sent to live with an aunt in Norway. Despite strict instructions to stay out of the dark and mysterious forest near their aunt's home, the children are drawn into the woods one by one and face both good and evil in their attempts to return home. In a review for Kidsreads.com, Norah Piehl described the book as "a sparkling juvenile debut by a writer who understands how children think" and "a superb, briskly plotted fantasy that will appeal both to kids and to his growing numbers of adult readers."