Wallace is Black, queer, and living in the Midwest, slowly working toward his biochemistry degree. Even among his closest friends in his cohort, Wallace holds himself back, keeping the details of his Alabama childhood private. One weekend late in the semester, the many undiscussed tensions underlying their lives break through the surface. 

Holy cow, this is a debut novel?! Taylor's writing is seething, Wallace's anger and fear and hope are barely contained on the page. In so few pages, he prods at the interconnected issues of the pressures of academia, racism in historically white settings, internalized homophobia, and deep, abiding loneliness. There's so much going on in this book and Taylor pulls it all together in a seemingly effortless way. 

As he nears the end of his live, Stanford Solomon is ready to reveal a secret he's kept for most of his life. He is actually Abel Paisley, and decades ago he faked his own death and abandoned his family. THESE GHOSTS ARE FAMILY traces the effects of that decision and follows Abel's many-branched family tree from present day Harlem back to colonial Jamaica. 

For once, comparisons to HOMEGOING are not overblown with THESE GHOSTS ARE FAMILY. This book is a multilayered, beautiful work. It's not the same story though - this book is deeply, uniquely Jamaican, and a look at a slave narrative that American readers don't often see. 

As is clear by the title, the characters in this book are haunted, both literally and figuratively. This book is about all the terrible things that pile up in the dark corners of families over the span of generations - much of it rooted in exploitation of women - and how each person wrestles with them. 

Even with as large a cast of characters as this book has, I was equally drawn to and interested in each person's story. Each was distinctive, and piecing together how they were all related kept me turning the pages as fast as I could. 

Karl Bender used to play in a moderately famous band in the '90s, but now he's a middle aged bar owner who doesn't really know what to do with his life. That is, until he discovers a wormhole in his closet. Karl and his best friend Wayne start a side hustle charging people for trips to the past to see their favorite bands, until Karl accidentally sends Wayne back to 980 instead of 1980. So he seeks help from an astrophysicist named Lena, and while working to bring Wayne back, the two fall in love with each other while also wrestling with being able to visit (and possibly change) the darkest moments of their pasts. 

Wow, this book! It's funny and nostalgic about music in exactly the way I like to be. It also engages seriously with not only the logistics and potential disruptive effects of time travel but also possible emotional effects on the traveler. Karl, Lena, and other minor characters all discuss an unexpected deep sadness upon returning and knowing that you're back in your regular old life. This, then, is how Karl and Lena both end up compulsively visiting the worst moments of their lives and wrestling with whether or not they should attempt to change the course of their own lives. 

I will note that the traveling system is definitely a "reverse the polarity" sort of situation - nothing is really explained and we just go with it - but EVERY ANXIOUS WAVE has tremendous heart for a book that, on the surface, seems like just a funny thought experiment.