The Saturday Night Ghost Club by Craig Davidson: A Review

“we are only human, a condition of perpetual uncertainty and failure.”
Craig Davidson, The Saturday Night Ghost Club

As a child of the 80s, I find it really hard to resist the nostalgia of anything set at that time. Whether it’s actually 80s stuff like re-watching “The Goonies” for the thousandth time, or new things set in the 80s, like “Stranger Things”, I am a complete sucker for it. I think I especially like stories where the protagonists are kids because that’s what I can related to from that time. Enter The Saturday Night Ghost Club. Set it 1980s Niagara Falls, Davidson’s novel evokes a lot about that place and time to create the setting. Jake, a fat kid with few friends, spends a lot of his free time with his Uncle Calvin, an eccentric guy who is a die-hard believer in conspiracy theories and owner of a store dealing in occult objects. Jake recounts the experiences of one summer when he, his uncle, and a handful of others decide to initiate the Saturday Night Ghost Club – a group that visits Niagara Falls’ supposedly haunted spaces and listens to Calvin recount the stories of the gruesome events that happened there.

In a lot of ways, this is a classic coming-of-age novel that evokes writers like Stephen King. By turns funny and sad, it gets at the heart of what it feels like to start seeing the world through the eyes of the outsiders and castoffs who populate the novel. I thought this book was going to be about Jake growing up and out-growing his uncle’s ghost stories, but it turns out to be much more than that. Through the Saturday Night Ghost Club, Jake begins to realize that his uncle’s quirkiness is actually a symptom of a long-held family secret. I really like this novel, which I found both page-turning and tender. I got through it in a couple of days by reading and listening to it on audio, and the audio is worth it if you don’t want to pick up a copy.

Tomorrow look for my review of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid which is, once again, something completely different. Until then, happy reading!

The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray: A Review

“That river runs through the place where I was easier to define. The place that made me who I used to be. Althea Marie Butler-Cochran: round, dimpled face; rounding, dimpled body; smooth, light brown skin; wife; mother; daughter; sister; mighty force of nature.”
― Anissa Gray, The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls

The title! The cover design! But never mind, those might have been the reasons I first noticed Anissa Gray’s debut novel but it is the powerful writing that really captured me. The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls is the story of a family dealing with crisis. Althea and Proctor were pillars of their community; they ran a popular family restaurant and were raising their two daughters. But when the novel opens, Althea and Proctor are in prison on charges of fraud. They had been skimming money from the charities they ran and they got caught. The novel alternates between a variety of voices, those of Althea and Proctor, and Althea’s sisters, Viola and Lillian as the family tries to come to terms with their new reality. At the forefront is how to help the couple’s teenage daughters cope with what is unfolding, but the novel delves deep into family connections, especially relationships between mothers and daughters, but also between siblings. Althea, Viola and Lillian also face their own demons and through her novel Gray examines heavy subjects like eating disorders, homophobia, childhood neglect and life in the prison system.

I listened to this book on audio which enhanced the experience of having the novel told through different characters’ voices because each was read by a different performer. While it deals with subject matter similar to An American Marriage, the focus of Gray’s novel isn’t so much about the dissolution of a family as it is about the attempt to hold one together. All of the characters are flawed in their own ways but each is still striving to do what they believe to be right but old family secrets have to be brought to light in order for them to find a way forward.

Gray’s novel is not what most people would categorize as “summer reading”, especially if you prefer something light and breezy at the beach, but it is an impressive debut and is well worth the read. Tomorrow I will post about The Saturday Night Ghost Club by Craig Davidson for something completely different. Until then, happy reading!

A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza: A Review

“Afsoos was the word in Urdu. There was no equivalent in English. It was a specific kind of regret – not wishing he had acted differently, but a helpless sadness at the situation as it was, a sense that it could not have been another way.”
Fatima Farheen Mirza, A Place for Us

If I say the words, “sweeping family saga” and you perk up, this might be a novel for you. Set in contemporary California, it opens at the wedding of Hadia, the oldest child in an Indian Muslim family. Her estranged brother, Amar has returned for the wedding and the story circles back into the family’s past, tracing the reasons why Amar chose to leave and that decision’s impact on his family. This novel is very much driven by character and events often take time to fully reveal themselves, as they are revisited through the experiences and memories of the family members.

As the title indicates, the novel largely centers on themes of acceptance and many of the characters question their place within their families, and their religious and cultural communities. Mirza is able to explore the ways in which faith, gender and tradition influences the way her characters understand themselves and their place within the family. There is a very contemplative feel to the novel and Mirza avoids tropes of “happily ever after”, instead allowing her characters to live with their questions and regrets. She depicts a family that is trying to heal around a wound, trying to push forward a build a good life despite what has happened. Like any good family story, there are many interpretations of why events unfolded as they did. The reader can see Amar and his family trying to decided: was this just how he is? Did we make him this way? Was there something different we could have said, could have done, to prevent this from happening? Mirza also explores what it means to leave some questions unanswered as her characters try to come to terms with things they cannot fully explain. Ultimately the novel is about acceptance, belonging, hope, and the ties that bind families together.

This debut made a lot of Best Books of 2018 lists and while I certainly appreciate the beauty of Mirza’s writing, I have to admit that I found this book a little slow. There were times when we seemed to be going over the same ground again and again and while I think that her narrative style did add depth and complexity to her characters’ experiences, I wanted it to move a little faster most of the time.

I am way behind on my posts but I will be trying to get caught up this week so if A Place for Us doesn’t ring your bell, stay tuned! Until next time, happy reading!

gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson: A Review

“There are gods in Alabama: Jack Daniel’s, high school quarterbacks, trucks, big tits, and also Jesus.” – Joshilyn Jackson, gods in Alabama

Full disclosure: I read this book on audio, which is something I wouldn’t have said until this year. I am not a stranger to audio books – my partner listens to them from time to time on his commute to work, and on long car trips, I always try to have a couple queued up for the kids (this is a genius parenting hack by the way, the are silent the entire time the book is playing). I don’t know why it took me so long to make the connection that I could increase my reading time by using audio books myself. Maybe it’s because it feels a little bit like cheating, but after trying it, I think I’m a convert. There are times when reading a physical book just isn’t convenient and there are a lot of times when it’s not even possible – driving and folding my family’s unending piles of laundry come to mind – but those are perfect times to listen to books on audio. Before I downloaded one, I got some tips from people who make audio books a regular part of their reading lives. I think different people have different preferences, but here are some general rules I think are safe: listen to the clip on your app before you download – if you don’t like the reader’s voice in that 60 seconds, you probably don’t want to hear another 6 hours of it. Choose books that work well for hearing rather than seeing – novels, memoirs, or histories are all good choices. It’s a great way to increase how much you read and may make things like housework or waiting for an appointment just a little more enjoyable.

gods in Alabama was a good choice for audio. I already knew I liked Joshilyn Jackson, having read The Almost Sisters. She is also an actor and reads some of her own works on audio, but this one was read by Catherine Taber. Most of the novel is set in Alabama and I think it added an element to the experience to hear the story in the proper accent. The novel centers around Lena (known as Arlene to her family back in Alabama) who fled her hometown after high school and never looked back. Her uncle’s retirement party, coupled with the fact that her long-time boyfriend won’t marry her until he has met her family forces her to take the trip home for the first ten years later. As the story unfolds, there are many complications both past and present: Lena’s boyfriend, Burr is black, and her family is not exactly progressive in their views of interracial relationships. Lena’s mother is not well and her aunt is furious that it has taken a decade for Lena to come home.

Bit by bit, Jackson reveals Lena’s motivations for fleeing the South in the first place, and why she is so reluctant to return home. There is an element of mystery to the novel but it is really about family, and how far families will go to protect their own. It is also about how dangerous it can be for people to go against what Lena refers to as the “gods of Alabama” and how much pressure their is to fit into certain ‘types’ in their small Alabama town. A characteristic of Jackson’s writing that I really appreciate it that her female characters are really strong but still flawed in ways that make them relatable. Lena is secretive and sometimes purposely misleads people without outright lying, her Aunt Flo is sharp and not afraid to show her temper, Burr’s mother is kind to Lena but makes no bones about the fact that her loyalties lie with her son. Jackson’s writing touches on so many elements of the South: religion, racism, the internal dynamics of small town life. The story moves quickly but the quality of the writing doesn’t suffer for it. Jackson is adept at making you think one thing is happening before pulling back the curtain and showing you what has actually been going on the entire time.

Do you ever read books on audio? I would love some recommendations if you have any!

June Line Up

Okay, they say better late than never, right? Apologies for getting this post up after June has already begun but this month kind of crept up on me. When June comes around I usually start anticipating what I’m going to be reading over the summer. This year, I had a really hard time settling into what kind of books I felt like reading so I picked up a few with the idea that I would read a chapter or two and then make up my mind. It resulted it me reading five books at once, which is something I never do. Because I am rotating between books, the theme for this month is In No Particular Order. As I finish each book, I will post about it.

gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson: This is the first audio book in my reading challenge (which is why it’s not in the picture). It’s another novel set in the South. The story follows the main character, Lena as she returns to her hometown in Alabama for the first time since she left it ten years before. The novel is contemporary fiction and mixes mystery with family drama. Listening to it adds an extra element of fun because the narrator has an Alabama accent so it really helps to capture the sense of place in a way that reading it in my head probably wouldn’t.

A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza: If you are keeping score at home, I was supposed to have read this book in May, that didn’t quite work out but I am enjoying it so far. It’s a fairly long novel and I don’t want to rush through it. Some books are page turners and some are meant to be savoured. I promise though – I will finish it this month.

The Wonderling by Mira Bartok: This is a middle grade novel. I confess to reading young adult and middle grade fiction on a fairly regular basis. There are a lot of great books written in these genres that I think adults pass over because they are marketed as being for younger audiences. The Wonderling is set in a world where there are humans and groundlings – characters that are hybrids of humans and animals or animals and animals. The story begins with Number 13, a groundling who has lived his whole life at the Home for Wayward and Misbegotten Creatures. Number 13 manages to escape, and then sets off to find what happened to his real family. And so far, it’s good.

Tell Me More by Kelly Corrigan: I just learned about Kelly Corrigan recently. She writes memoirs but this is a collection of essays based on the twelve hardest things that Corrigan has learned to say. Things like, onward, and I was wrong, and I don’t know. She approaches each phrase with the stories from her own life that taught her the importance of having to say things even when you struggle for the words. She writes about her experiences in ways that are funny and heart-breaking on the same page. The essays are short enough that you can easily read one in a single sitting. Between Corrigan and Sedaris, I may be a convert to essays as a genre.

Drive Your Plow Over The Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk: I recently learned that compared to other parts of the world, North Americans read very few translated works. It made me wonder what kinds of things people were writing in other languages, and then I had a crippling case of FOMO (fear of missing out). I’ve started to look for more works in translation lately and this one caught my eye because of the title. It’s originally written in Polish and the main character, Janina, is an elderly woman living in a remote Polish village. When bodies start turning up, Janina is sure she knows who did it but no one will listen to her because of her reputation as cranky and maybe a little crazy. This is the first Tokarczuk novel I have ever read, but according to Google, she is a very big deal on the international writing scene.

So this is me for the month of June. If you have any recommendations for some great summer reads, I’d love to hear them! Until next time, happy reading!