Wednesday, January 9, 2019

The Saturday Night Ghost Club by Craid Davidson


36911680
2 Stars

“What follows is an account, as I choose to remember it, of my twelfth year on this planet – the summer of the Saturday Night Ghost Club.”
When I received this from my Book Fairy, it was like . . . .



A new selection from an author who has never failed me? What could possibly go wrong? Well, allow me to take you on a journey that will hopefully eventually get to the point . . . but since it’s me maybe it won’t.

Many years ago I came across a free book written by someone I had never heard of and I thought it was the bees knees. A few months later I read . . . well pretty much the same book, but a more well known version written by a more famous author. I overlooked it because hey, we all gotta start somewhere, right? Then it happened again . . . . and again. Yes, the writing was good, but the concepts/storylines/characters took “inspired by” to a level I wasn’t comfortable with so I washed my hands of that person.

So what does that have to do with Craig Davidson? He’s too gooooooooooooooooooood to have to resort to riffing on others’ old work. Dude is so good he writes under THREE names (that I’m aware of – hell he could write under a dozen more for all I know). His stuff is the original, envelope pushing type of book other people borrow from in order to attempt to write their own, less than, pieces. And the Saturday Night Ghost Club? It’s basically this kid . . .



(That part gets a pass because pretty much every coming of age story about a male human child could be this kid.)

Telling this guy’s story . . . .



Remember him? Uncle Red? Even my friend Trudi (who loved this book and who called dibs ages ago on being the Annie Wilkes to Cutter/Davidson/Lestewka) said the same thing in her review.

There just wasn’t much to this story – either in substance or page count. The characters felt hollow and future Jake’s profession made it glaringly obvious what Uncle C’s problem was/what everything was leading up to – not to mention I cared absolutely ZERO PERCENT about the inserts regarding his patients and their brain issues. Oh, and the “big reveal????”



Yeah.

While some things were awesomely reminiscent of true urban legends spread throughout my youth – like KFC having to drop the term “chicken” due to creating some sort of mutant that was pretty much only breasts and legs . . . .



Other things that I would usually dismiss ended up really getting under my skin – like a teenage girl in the 1980s taking medicine for depression/bi-polar disorder (her diagnosis is not disclosed). Sorry, in the ‘80s puberty would have been blamed for this child’s mood swings.

So there it is. Sucks that I suck, but I do and so does this rating : (

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