Every Anxious Wave

By: Mo Daviau

Narrated by: Zach Villa

Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins

Publisher's Summary

Why would we need music if our lives were exactly as we wanted them to be?

Karl Bender is a quiet guy who lives in three places: his bar, his apartment, and the cheap Mediterranean place on the corner that keeps him well fed with his daily portion of hummus and chicken shwarma. But that's all about to change. When he stumbles upon a time-traveling wormhole, Karl develops a business selling access to people who want to go back in time to hear their favorite bands. It's a pretty ingenious plan, and Karl's indie rock ethics ensure that he keeps things small and special.

Until, that is, he mistakenly transports best friend Wayne to 980 Mannahattan instead of 1980 Manhattan. Karl is distraught. He needs an ally. And he finds one in brilliant, prickly, overweight astrophysicist Lena Geduldig. The connection is immediate. While they work on getting Wayne back, Karl and Lena fall in love - with time travel and each other. Unable to resist meddling with the past, they bounce around time. That's when they alter the course of their lives. That's when they threaten their future together.

A wild romp of a love story across time, Every Anxious Wave plays ball with the big questions: Who would we become if we could rewrite our pasts? How do we hold on to love across time?

©2016 Mo Daviau (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Interesting, character driven story.

This is a book about the application of love in its many forms on time travel. If you are like me and enjoy a book where the characters drive the story you will love this book. As one reviewer pointed out there is a lot of casual swearing and some crude portions. Normally this would bother me, but for the most part it seemed organic within the context of the book in relation to its characters. Check it out and decide for yourself.

One. Full. Day.

I spent one entire day listening to this magnetic novel.
As one Doctor might say, "Time is more of a wibbly-wobbly timey wimey...stuff..." so reads the pages of this constantly evolving book.
It's also not really a book.
The science behind the time travel on this work is simple, but not too simple. Facts behind the theories spoken of are accurate, if not only to keep the story moving at a film style pace.
With prose on sad-sackery through nostalgia honed in on the late 80's to early 90's, the reminders of a long lost era never bogs down the read, nor does the narrator let the sometimes down beat prose keep the flow moving.
With passages on subjects on the Einstein–Rosen bridge and the quantum physics behind the tech that enables cross time texting, this roadmap through time and space peaks and bends the notion behind a theme that absolute love, and an Elliot Smith lyric, transcends the good Doctors ideas.

indie rock, time travel romance

I initially forgot why I purchased this book. it was on sale and I decided to take a chance. hearing Karl Bender's world seemed somewhat like mine, in couldn't imagine my current life in my early twenties. I normally wouldn't have chosen a romance and probably would have quit if it wasn't for the indie rock and time travel. Overall I really liked the story and even suggested it to others.

Great Opening Notes, Slows Down Some

Any additional comments?

There’s a moment early in the musical Urinetown where a character comes on stage and explains the premise: yes, this is a story about a dystopian future where water is rationed, but it’s going to deal only with the question of how people have limited opportunities to pee. If you want to know about the other implications – where will our food come from, how will we stay hydrated – don’t bother. There’s a premise here; get it, roll with it, and enjoy it.

This novel starts out with that same flippant joy. Slacker guy discovers time travel. His one friend, a computer wiz, whips up an app to control it. And they establish a rule that the device can be used only for purposes of going back to watch legendary bands play shows you were too young or not hip enough to see. All that in the first 8-10 pages.

So, yeah, I was on board right away.

And the beginning of this is full of real cleverness and joy. It happens to be set in the Chicago of my own young adulthood, and it’s a bit of an ego stroke to get the sense that 21st century hipsters lust after mid ’90s shows at The Empty Bottle or Lounge Ax, that they’d have wanted to see (and here I venture a bit out of the text) the Young Fresh Fellows, Southern Culture on the Skids, or the not-quite-spent Alex Chilton, all in front of crowds less than 150.

There’s an early fun conflict when Carl accidentally sends his friend back to 980 rather than 1980, and that means he has to seek out another astrophysicist to straighten things out. And she brings a lot of drama.

If you’ve read the back of the book, you know all that, and you’ll know if it sounds appealing. To me, absolutely. And I’m glad to say that Daviau delivers. She finds just the right balance between hip and self-effacing. Carl’s history as the “Garfunkle” of a successful late punk band – one distinguished by its lead singer’s appreciation of the beauty of “chubby girls” – unspools in satisfying ways. I can almost hear them playing “Pin Cushion,” their big hit.

As this moves along, though, I get the sense that Daviau, having spent that great burst of inspiration, started to alter the DNA of the original story.

[SPOILER] Over time, that first principle of time travel gets modified. Part of the joy of Urinetown (written, in part, by a friend of friends from my Chicago near-hipster days, so half a point of street cred to me) is that it never wavered from its goofy premise. Every Single Wave does, though. Whether it’s about trying to prevent John Lennon’s murder or making increasingly complex changes in the life of a friend, the novel becomes more and more about the typical time-travel novel conventions: you can’t control the unintended effects of alterations you make. Our hero makes one change, has to discover its implications, and then has to make further changes.

The continued good news is that Daviau mostly sustains the simple pleasure of her narrative voice, but I can’t help feel a bit cheated. I was supposed to be buying a ticket to see the Replacements playing Ann Arbor in 1985. Instead I’ve got a day pass for Pitchfork. The music’s still good, and there’s enough of it to keep you spinning around, but it’s also something I can get other places. The peculiar magic of the start of this just doesn’t hold up, but there’s enough cleverness and fun to make it worthwhile seeing how all the frayed ends get sewn back together.

Academy of Music, New York City, 11/24/1971

That's the concert I would travel back in time to see. Yes, King Crimson, and Procol Harum -- three iconic prog-rock bands at the dawn of the popularity of prog-rock (before its descent into bombasity several years later), the moment Yes and Crimson grew popular in America. Or maybe the Allmans at the Fillmore, of the Dead's Bear's Choice concert. So many shows, so few time machines to send you back to see them.

Such is the premise of Mo Daviau's debut novel, which jumps right into a wormhole that takes former minor alt-rock star Karl Bender back in time, and which he uses to go back to the great shows he may or may not have seen in his youth. (He is partial to alt and punk, and if I had to stick to his genre, I'd go back to see early Smiths or Ben Folds Five or even Karl's fave, Elliott Smith.)

While this is all in good fun for fans of this genre, a la High Fidelity, it is not enough for a serious book, so things get personal when Karl hires Lena, a Ph.D. candidate in physics to help retrieve his friend from the year 980, where he was accidentally sent instead of 1980 (where he intended to stop the murder of John Lennon). The remainder is about Karl's belated coming to maturity over Lena, with the time travel element complicating matters in ways I will not spoil.

Overall, entertaining for sure and interesting in the way time altering tales can be. But as in so many time travel stories, plot holes emerge, almost by definition. Again, I don't want to spoil anything, but as opposed to the way The Terminator/La Jetee finds an especially neat way to close all its time loops, Daviau lets her timelines spin out of control. Meanwhile, the original hook -- the music -- diminishes as a factor, by the end ignored entirely. Too bad. A good listen, but some missed opportunities.

Rock time travel!

The reader really brought this book to life - it would make a good movie! If you like reading about time travel, this is for you - makes you consider what you could/should/shouldn't try to change.

Frustrating

The story begins with exciting time traveling experiences then turns into a weird soap opera with a long drawn out ending that is neither a relief or a surprise. Too much swearing.

Didn't hold me.

Struggled with the concept, delivery and psychedelic underpinnings. it was painful to grasp the science with the fiction. it was hindered by the overarching explanation and foul language.

Loved this book

I'm not a sci-fi person at all but I found this book to be amazing. Very thought provoking.

excellent story

I'm glad to have found this book. I couldn't stop listening after it started. All of the ups and downs, a real nail biter