Literary in the City

RATING: 4.25/5

“Memory becomes what we need it to be.”

The Saturday Night Ghost Club

A New Year brings new resolutions, and one of mine is to post more frequently on my blog. When I say the end of 2024 hit me like a truck, I mean it hit me like a truck! Wow! As far as year’s go, that was a 0/10. 

Anyways, my first read of 2025 was The Saturday Night Ghost Club by Craig Davidson, whom you may also know as Nick Cutter. I visited Barnes and Nobles a bunch over the holidays, and I kind of just walked by this book a couple of times, not-so-secretly eyeing it, before caving in and just buying the damn thing.

The Saturday Night Ghost Club follows the adventures of Jake, an awkward twelve-year-old boy reeling from a year of schoolyard bullies. With his eccentric uncle Calvin and neighborhood friends Billy and Dove, he spends his summer chasing down all things mystical, spooky, and ghostly in Niagara Falls. 

I’m going to be honest–the plot moved really slow on this one. However, Davidson compensates for that with his spellbinding writing. You know when you read a piece of work and think “Whoa! That person is a writer!”  Yeah, that’s how I felt. There’s good variety within the sentence structure and unique yet captivating similes. You feel more pensive and literary after reading this book, and perhaps that’s the spirit we’re looking to start this year off with.

What I loved most about this novel is how it explored the intersectionality between grief, memory, and time. In particular, there’s one quote that I loved. Part of it is at the top of the article, but here’s the full thing: “Reality never changes. Only our recollections of it do. Whenever a moment passes, we pass along with it into the realm of memory. And in that realm, geometries change. Contours shift, shades lighten, objectivities dissolve. Memory becomes what we need it to be.” 

I’ve been thinking a lot about memory and what we carry with us and how our mental souvenirs change as we go through life. Real light-hearted stuff, right? Frankly, there’s something eerie about knowing that all our memories are altered by our regrets, our experiences, our personality shifts. But it’s also proof that we, as humans, are ever-changing, ever-growing.

My next read is one I’ve been dying to get my hands on for a while (cough cough Richard Osman); once I turn the last page, I’ll write a review. Promise. For real. In the meantime, as you wait, please savor the delicious pages of The Saturday Night Ghost Club. 

Sincerely promising to write more,

H.