The Saturday Night Ghost Club
Ratings53
Average rating3.9
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ROGERS WRITERS' TRUST FICTION PRIZE: An infectious and heartbreaking novel from "one of this country's great kinetic writers" (Globe and Mail)--Craig Davidson's first new literary fiction since his bestselling, Giller-shortlisted Cataract City When neurosurgeon Jake Baker operates, he knows he's handling more than a patient's delicate brain tissue--he's altering their seat of consciousness, their golden vault of memory. And memory, Jake knows well, can be a tricky thing. When growing up in 1980s Niagara Falls, a.k.a. Cataract City--a seedy but magical, slightly haunted place--one of Jake's closest confidantes was his uncle Calvin, a sweet but eccentric misfit enamored of occult artefacts and outlandish conspiracy theories. The summer Jake turned twelve, Calvin invited him to join the "Saturday Night Ghost Club"--a seemingly light-hearted project to investigate some of Cataract City's more macabre urban myths. Over the course of that life-altering summer, Jake not only fell in love and began to imagine his future, he slowly, painfully came to realize that his uncle's preoccupation with chilling legends sprang from something buried so deep in his past that Calvin himself was unaware of it. By turns heartwarming and devastating, written with the skill and cinematic immediacy that has made Craig Davidson a star, The Saturday Night Ghost Club is a bravura performance from one of our most remarkable literary talents: a note-perfect novel that poignantly examines the fragility and resilience of mind, body and human spirit, as well as the haunting mutability of memory and story.
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This was such a quick read I was surprised by how emotionally resonant it was. Masquerading as a group of misfit kids chasing down old town ghost stories, there's actually a much deeper, more tender plot at the heart. Very very sweet and sad.
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I felt this book focused too much on the manic pixie dream girl cliche which is especially problematic when used in conjunction with the “damaged first nations” girl trope. I would expect better from a Canadian on how to represent first nations in literature. I don't expect it to be perfect but I expect it to at least try and avoid the damaging stereotypes. The book dragged on for me. The first half was a struggle to get through. The writing is beautiful but the story was too slow paced for me. This is entirely preference based and does not speak poorly about the book itself as I know some people like a sleepy small-ish town story. It just wasn't for me. I was hoping for a little more ghost story of the literal kind and less of a ghost story metaphorically. I wanted to give this a two star but I changed it to three because the last half took an interesting turn.
