The Saturday Night Ghost Club

‘Everything I’ve told you is true. Every word of it. But you must know this, too: I want it to be true. Everything in me wants that.
For my uncle. But also for the Yellowbirds. For Lexington. For my folks. For me. For the sake of who we were back then, and to make peace with who we’ve become now, with all our needful ghosts.’

Damn. This is one heck of a ride. A coming of age story set in 1980s Canada which draws you in, makes you smile and root for the characters, then BAM, it hits you with a sucker punch that suddenly changes everything you have just read, and by the time you get to the end and read the last couple of pages you will have tears in your eyes. Uplifting, gut-wrenching, and a lyrical homage to all our childhoods.

Jake show more Baker is twelve years old, living in Niagara Falls with his parents. He is the kind of kid who doesn’t really fit in; he’s a bit fat and a bit geeky, prone to getting picked on at school. So, when new kids Billy and Dove Yellowbird appear and he starts to hang out with them, new friendships are born. Billy is the same age as Jake, and Dove is a couple of years older, and so they spend the summer doing what kids did in the 1980s: riding their bikes and telling stories. They spend a lot of time at Jake’s uncle’s shop, the Occultorium, where Calvin indulges in his fascination with the obscure and the ephemeral. Together with Calvin’s friend Lexington they create the Saturday Night Ghost Club, where they meet up in various locations around the city for Calvin to tell spooky tales of death and violence (yep, some of the stories are quite vivid). All the while, however, there is an impending sense of foreboding; the book is narrated by an older Jake, who now works as a neurosurgeon, as he looks back on this particular summer and the tumultuous events that occurred. As we progress there are clues to what might be happening, but when the truth is finally revealed you just get this sense of the pain and the despair of a life torn apart. Suddenly everything falls into place and when the book ends it is with a quiet sense of hope, yet also a bittersweet sadness.

Craig Davidson is an excellent writer, and I really did get a sense of a time and place captured perfectly in his often-beautiful prose. I have one slight niggling issue that prevents me from giving this a full 5 stars, because just too often it reminded me of Stephen King’s short story ‘The Body’, which was of course the basis for the film ‘Stand By Me’. All I could hear sometimes was the voice of Richard Dreyfus! Heck, the kids in this book even break into a scrapyard at one point, just like the film. I’m sure it wasn’t conscious copying, but as Davidson casts a nod to King in his afterword, clearly he knows the story. It just stopped me from completely raving about this book, and made it great rather than fantastic. However, it is a fine addition to the coming-of-age genre and will definitely move you with its likeable central characters and its fine writing. Definitely a worthy 4 stars. show less

I can't remember where I heard about this hidden gem, but it seemed appropriate for the time of year - I was aiming for Halloween, but overshot it by a few days. Anyway the vibe is more 'coming-of-age' than haunt or horror, but it was still fun to be scared vicariously. The narrator, Jake Baker is twelve in the flash-back retrospect, not unlike Stand By Me (Stephen King's The Body in print), and that summer he makes a fast friend Billy Yellowbird, has his first major crush on Billy's older sister, Dove, and learns some family secrets. It is 1980s Niagara Falls, and the Birds are new to town. Prior to their arrival, Jake was a bit of a bullied loner, and hung out a lot with his uncle Calvin, who treated Jake like an adult, but was a bit show more of a kid himself. He is preoccupied with all things spooky and owns a tourist trap store on the strip called the Occultorium. This is like a magnet for kids - the Birds are no exception, and to help Jake cement his friendship with Billy, he dreams up the Saturday Night Ghost Club (Dove is welcome too, but has her own ghosts to confront). He takes the kids to a couple key sites in the area - Niagara is rife with urban legends and spooky stories, and real-life weirdos. The events deliver a good scare as promised - too good on one occasion, and Jake starts to pull away from his Uncle C a bit. He'd always been an little 'odd duck,' but in Jake's dawning maturity, he begins to see it as a problem, rather than an admired trait. Jake's parents are awesome (the Dad reminds me of the Dad in A Christmas Story) and Billy is a good egg who helps Jake gain the courage to stand up to his bullies. The crush on Dove is sweet - so typical for the age and era and so instrumental in Jake's growing up. I loved seeing Niagara from a non-tourist perspective - they just happen to live near a noisy waterfall - and the story was poignant on many levels. The idea of the brain and its power of memory figures prominently - Jake grew up to be a brain surgeon, so we get the scientific, but also the empirical, with the point being both are essential. In the end, "Memory becomes what we need it to be." show less

I've come to the conclusion that Craig Davidson/Nick Cutter and I were simply not meant to be.

I know everyone else is fawning all over this novel, but for me, there was very little magic.

Someone else said in their review of this that Davidson is a reader's writer. I have to respectfully disagree, as anyone who reads a lot can very plainly see all the strings Davidson is pulling. A seasoned reader will see all the support structure behind the pretty sets. I find Davidson's writing very obvious.

I won't give it all away here, but if you were to make a list of a stereotypical coming of age novel, what would you stick in that list?

- the main character is likely the kid who's a bit different, who doesn't fit in
- a kid who bullies him that show more he'll need to eventually stand up to
- a new girl in town who's simply too attractive and kind to him
- a quirky relative who's engaging and takes the main character under his wing
- a bit of a mystery
- a town that can be both fondly remembered, but also has the ability to harbour darkness

Yeah. That's this novel. A paint-by-numbers novel that has been done—and done much better—by others. Davidson takes fucking forever to get the story going, then telegraphs his revelations pages in advance, and tacks on a very clunky explanation toward the end of the novel, instead of letting it all come to the main character in a more organic fashion.

And then there's just some stuff in there that simply feels like filler. The Screaming Tunnel. The junkyard.

I love the sandbox Davidson/Cutter plays in, but everything he does is weak echoes of those that played in the sandbox before him, and did it all better.

If you want to read the better written—and much more magical—version of this novel, do yourself a favour and pick up Robert R. McCammon's wonderful Boy's Life. Read that, and you'll see how much this one pales in comparison.

And I'm done with him now. I'll never read another Davidson or Cutter book again. Life's too short. show less

I picked up Craig Davidson's new novel, The Saturday Night Ghost Club on a lazy Sunday morning and literally couldn't put it down until the last page was turned. Yup, that addicting.

Our protagonist is Jake Baker - we meet him as the adult neurosurgeon he is today and the young boy he was, living in Cataract City (aka Niagara Falls, Canada. In Latin, cataracta means waterfall), circa 1980. Jake is that odd kid out - overweight, shy with no real friends. He hangs out with his Uncle Cal, who owns the Occultorium on the tourist lined streets of the Falls. Cal believes in the otherworld, ghosts, conspiracy theories and more. When Billy Yellowbird moves into town, Jake has finally found a friend. And Cal has two members for his proposed show more Saturday Night Ghost Club.

"This city is haunted by ghosts. Uncle C used to say this, though not to scare me. He'd say it with a cocked eyebrow and an inscrutable smile, a merry jester beckoning me to embark on a grand adventure."

I could vividly picture the setting, having visited the Falls many times. The busy, congested, neon party that is Clifton Hill sprang to life. Davidson takes us behind those streets to the lives of the permanent residents of Cataract City. I appreciated the cultural references woven throughout the book....."We did what Canadian kids do on unbearably hot summer days: watched reruns of The Beachcombers and Danger Bay on the CBC..."

Initially there's a 'Stranger Things' feel to The Saturday Night Ghost Club - exploring the haunted landmarks and sites of the Falls. That's the setting, but the story is much more than that. Friendship, love, family, coming of age - and memory. "The brain is the seat of memory, and memory is a tricky thing."

Davidson is a one heck of a storyteller. His prose flow so easily and draw the reader into the world he's created. His characters leap to life and will break your heart. Those last fifty pages? So very, very good. And once you've turned that last page, head back to that first chapter again. You'll look at it with different eyes. An absolutely wonderful read. show less

The blurb for this book says that it's about some kids who spend the summer investigating local urban legends and ghost stories. It mentions the MC's uncle with whom the MC spends most of his time. And in some places online, the book is compared to Stranger Things. None of these things is accurate. Oh, and you may see the book listed as horror. It's not.

What really happens is that the summer passes quickly and only 5 local legends are investigated, the MC (Jake) goes long stretches without seeing his Uncle Calvin, and the only comparison that can be made to Stranger Things is that the book is set in the 80s and there are kids who do things.

The very first legend this club investigated was nice and creepy, and I thought it would ramp up show more from there. Instead, it ramped down. And the characters were limp and/or cliched. The girl felt like such a stereotype, and from the moment she's introduced, Jake sees her as a goddess...for what reason, I still can't tell you. Because she's older, I guess?

Each chapter begins with tales of adult Jake's life, from stories about his neurosurgeon cases to an account of his son being born. The reception of these parts seems to vary widely from reviewer to reviewer. I could have done without them, especially the too-descriptive explanations about how a brain looks and feels, and what it's like to do surgery on one.

The "reveal" wasn't very exciting, and I found it strange that the previous events didn't all tie together like it seemed like they should (hard to explain what I mean without spoiling). Also, the book is possibly meant to be YA--it depends on where you look, but the MC is 12, after all--but there is some language and references to adult situations.

So clearly this book was a miss for me. I'm not generally one for horror anyway (and the fact that I read it a few days before Halloween is completely coincidence, as I don't really do Halloween), but I thought it'd be a fun, intriguing read. Instead, I found myself wondering what the point of it was. And though I generally rate lower than the average book reviewer, this is the first book I've ever rated 1 star (I gave 1.5 stars once last year). I hate writing a review like this, and I know that the author put a lot of work into the book (as every author does) and that other people really liked it. show less

I was drawn to this book by its cover. It is a quiet coming-of-age story set during one summer in a small town on Niagara Falls in Canada, and the writing has an episodic feel to it, which is not my favorite style. However, the writing is quite good, and there are some lovely insights into the nature of memory and the stories we tell. Jake's weird Uncle C draws Jake and his new friend, Billy Yellowbird, into a "Saturday night ghost club" where he takes them to sites of tragedies around the town and tells a ghost story at each one. Whether there are actual ghosts depends on the reader's personal beliefs. The whole novel also functions as an old-fashioned "ghost story" in that things are not as they seem and there is an unexpected twist show more at the end. However, this story is less about ghosts and more about boyhood, nostalgia, and family. I liked it well enough but found it difficult to get caught up in the story, as I have read this type of thing many times before, so for me this was a mixed bag. show less

A humorous nostalgic read with an ending you won't suspect, but will make the book all the more heartfelt for it. The Saturday Night Ghost Club is a mix between the Stranger Things and the Goonies, but a little more melancholy, and highlights two lonely pre-teens on the verge of a great friendship. Set during the 80's in the unique town of Niagara Falls, Jake learns what it's like to get over your fears, make friends, and tune in with your slightly spooky surroundings. His Uncle C owns and operates the Occultorium and urges Jake and a newcomer to town to attend his Saturday evening ghost club. Jake must overcome his fear of spooky things and friendship, but quickly discovers that it is well worth the risk. Quirky, beautifully written, show more and touching; this is an excellent book of friendship and of things that go bump in the night. show less