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When one looks in the box, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the cat.

Reactor

Vampires really are back. The latest toothy tome to make its way adaptation-wards is Matt Haig’s 2010 novel The Radleys, the darkly funny story of a family of abstaining vampires who must come to terms with their neglected appetites.

Euros Lyn (Heartstopper) will direct the adaptation, which stars Damian Lewis (Homeland, Band of Brothers) as twin vampires Peter (the abstaining family man) and Will (the practicing vampire).

The novel’s summary gives a sense of what to expect:

Just about everyone knows a family like the Radleys. Many of us grew up next door to one. They are a modern family, averagely content, averagely dysfunctional, living in a staid and quiet suburban English town. Peter is an overworked doctor whose wife, Helen, has become increasingly remote and uncommunicative. Rowan, their teenage son, is being bullied at school, and their anemic daughter, Clara, has recently become a vegan. They are typical, that is, save for one devastating exception: Peter and Helen are vampires and have—for seventeen years—been abstaining by choice from a life of chasing blood in the hope that their children could live normal lives.

One night, Clara finds herself driven to commit a shocking—and disturbingly satisfying—act of violence, and her parents are forced to explain their history of shadows and lies. A police investigation is launched that uncovers a richness of vampire history heretofore unknown to the general public. And when the malevolent and alluring Uncle Will, a practicing vampire, arrives to throw the police off Clara’s trail, he winds up throwing the whole house into temptation and turmoil and unleashing a host of dark secrets that threaten the Radleys’ marriage.

The Guardian called The Radleys a “very original spin on the myth,” saying, “Haig pays just about enough respect to the conventions of the genre that the average vampire fan should find lots to enjoy, but it’s the blackly comic dissection of the family that makes this book stand out.”

No further casting or release date has been announced.

About the Author

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Molly Templeton

Author

Molly Templeton has been a bookseller, an alt-weekly editor, and assistant managing editor of Tor.com, among other things. She now lives and writes in Oregon, and spends as much time as possible in the woods.
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