This is Craig Davidson’s fourth book. The other three include Rust and Bone, Cataract City and his real memoir Precious Cargo. He’s a great author and best of all, he’s Canadian.
The Saturday Night Ghost Club is a gentle novel, part coming-of-age, part shattered life, and part haunting memoir. It explores memory and how each time an event is recalled, it changes.
Jake Breaker is a neurosurgeon. He understands the fragility of the brain and how mysterious its workings are. The summer he was twelve, Jake made a true friend and learned about his eccentric Uncle Cal. His uncle runs the Occultorium, a spiritual business full of cheap trinkets, real antiquities, and plain strange paraphernalia. Even as a kid, he knows that Uncle Cal isn’t quite “right.”
Jake’s recounting of his twelfth summer, the summer of The Saturday Night Ghost Club, is full of suspense. There is Billy, his new friend, and Dove, Billy’s sister, dangerous and verging on true beauty. They get into scrapes, put themselves in jeopardy, and hang out with Uncle Calvin.
The Saturday Night Ghost Club is set in 1980s Niagara Falls, nicknamed Cataract City. Uncle Cal takes the Club on nocturnal journeys to its haunted locations and reveals the legend or story associated with each one. Jake finally confesses to their night time pursuits to his parents and his mother is horrified.
This novel isn’t long, a bare 248 pages but it’s 248 pages to enjoy. If you hurry, you can read it before Hallowe’en.
themildsidelinda 