The Labrador Pact: Book summary and reviews of The Labrador Pact by Matt Haig

The Labrador Pact Summary

The Hunters are your typical family, with typical concerns—work, money, love, the trials of adolescence— with one difference: They are protected by a highly determined dog, their black Labrador, Prince. Prince views it as his sacred duty to defend his family and to guard its integrity. But what is he to do when the family's worst enemies are themselves?

Wry, perceptive, and heartbreaking, The Labrador Pact is a cunning and original take on domestic life in all its joy and disillusionment. Matt Haig has created an improbably poignant narrator in Prince, offering a truly unique perspective on the foibles of family relationships. As Prince uses every canine resource to keep the Hunter clan together, he finds himself confounded by the odd behavior of the humans he loves. To save the family, Prince must betray the ancient Pact of the Labradors—a decision that may cost him everything.

The Labrador Pact Reviews

"[T]he narrative is skimpy and redundant, perilously cute and clogged with anticipations of Haig's Shakespeare-inflected The Dead Fathers Club ...by no means a failure, but Aesop and Orwell did it better." - Kirkus Reviews.

"There's nothing light-hearted about Prince: he's more like a middle-aged accountant than a healthy young canine. Nonetheless, for the dog-lover there's much to enjoy in The Last Family in England: read it curled up in front of the fire beside your own mutt, and bring tissues." - The Age, Australia.

"This debut novel is a winner from page one . . . A subtle, dog's-eye view of the frailty of human relationships, it is perceptive, enchanting and destined to be this summer's must-read." - Mail on Sunday.

"It sounds kooky, but Haig pulls it off stylishly and unsentimentally." - The Guardian.

The information about The Labrador Pact shown above was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's online-magazine that keeps our members abreast of notable and high-profile books publishing in the coming weeks. In most cases, the reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author of this book and feel that the reviews shown do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, please send us a message with the mainstream media reviews that you would like to see added.

The Labrador Pact Reader Reviews

Click here and be the first to review this book!

Matt Haig Author Biography

Photo: Jerry Bauer

Matt Haig's writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Sunday Times, The Independent, and The Sydney Morning Herald. The Dead Fathers Club was his American debut but his second published novel following The Last Family in England (2004), a reworking of Henry IV, Part I from the point of view of a black Labrador named Prince.

Shadow Forest, his first book for children, was published in the UK in May 2007; and in the USA as Samuel Blink and the Forbidden Forest in June 2007 His next book for adults was The Possession of Mr Cave in May 2008, followed by The...