Every Anxious Wave by Mo DaviauMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
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.
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