Every Anxious Wave Review

This week's novel is Every Anxious Wave, time travel and rock concerts by Mo Daviau.  This was recommended again by NPR's best books of 2016.

Karl used to be in a mildly famous band and used to have a hippy, squatter girlfriend, but now he owns a bar and wallows in nostalgia.  When he finds a wormhole in his closet, he turns that nostalgia into a business, sending people back in time to see their favorite bands.  When he accidentally sends his only friend, Wayne, back to 980 instead of 1980, he has to get the help of grumpy astrophysicist, Lena, who would rather use the wormhole to change the past than see a concert.

I was so psyched about the premise of this one.  Going back in time to see any concert you want would be so cool.  I could see LCD Soundsystem at Madison Square Garden or Cheep Trick at Budokan.  I could see the Beatles in Hamburg.  If the premise expanded a bit, I could see ballets, operas, movie premieres in classic theaters.  I could see Macbeth at the Globe.

But I know Karl would judge me for these choices, and that makes it both really hard to relate to him and his "I have better taste than everyone and no one is cool enough to understand the true beauty of bands they've never heard of."  His attitude added a level of embarrassment, especially since I was so enthusiastic about the premise.  I'm enthusiastic about the wrong things and that makes me vapid or a sell out or a tool or something.  This is not what I want out of a reading experience.

Karl's life being stuck in the past, his stumbling upon a time machine that he only uses to go backwards, where he has strict rules of non-interference, and uses to relive his glory days, tie together thematically with incredible ease and creativity.  The problem is that I just can't sympathize.  I don't pine after the glory days because my glory days are ahead of me.  I don't get why he's pining after his ex-girlfriend when every way he describes her makes her sound awful.  Although I'm sure his struggles would resonate with some people, they just didn't for me and that made him come off whiny and unlikable.

The novel was also a fan of the more loosey-goosey school of time travel that I mentioned last week. You just have to suspend belief and let it wash over you without questioning too much.

"Wait, why can some people interact with the past and others can't?...Hold up, how does Karl remember timelines that were erased?  How are they holding conversations across time, wouldn't that take excessive precision?  If this future is a different timeline, was the jump between timelines part of their past?  Are they jumping across timelines when they travel through time?  How does...you know what?  Never mind.  Don't think about it too hard."

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Next week: The Invisible Library, librarians that travel across dimensions to find books, by Genevieve Cogman.