Utopia Avenue A Novel

I’m between 2 and 3 stars here. I love David Mitchell, and his trademarks are here, but I found this overlong, and overstylized with not much substance. I found myself frustrated with the constant cameos from real life musicians for seemingly no reason, as well as the extremely random Bone Clocks Easter egg towards the end of the novel (I GROANED) that honestly made me want to give up and had me speed reading til the end.

Incredible book, one of Mitchell's finest. Really makes you feel like you were there in the 60s, and I'm a 90's kid.

utopia avenue > daisy jones & the six 🫣

Solid read. Something about a David Mitchell novel always hooks me immediately. Nowhere near as mind-bending as his earlier works, and I wouldn't read it again, but a great end-of-summer book.

Pleasant surprise! I adored the setting and musicality of the book, by the ending I was more invested than I thought. Although the book is LONG and some scenes felt less relevant than others, it does build the story and characters of the band. It is not a five star read as I was slightly disappointed in the audiobook’s neglect of making full use of the auditory aspects of the story. Further, the band has four members and the equality of the artists is emphasised in the book, however Griff’s character feels underdeveloped. My absolute favourite parts were those dealing with Jasper’s mental illness and seeing the process of writing songs and music and what inspires artists.

I love Mitchell, but I'm writing this review because this book should have contained a trigger warning. I don't consider it a spoiler, but I'll write it below because I know trigger warnings can be divisive. **TW** Infant death

This was almost a 5 star read for me. The Mitchell voice I click with so often is here, though at the start I actually wasn’t with it, and stepped back for a bit. When I returned it was on and I proceeded at normal pace. Sometimes slowly down even, I was enjoying it so much. This is the story of a band in the 60s that never was. It collected orphans—of all sorts—both in the fiction, specifically, and abroad, ranging the Mitchell-verse/Uber novel/meta novel, etc etc. whatever you’d like to label it. When firing on all cylinders, the fiction mixes the bands present with their past on aptly names LPs of tracks, being each character in the band, with side one and side twos. It’s an interesting remix of Mitchell’s short story novellas that comprise the chapters and stack to the larger story being told. It’s thematically on point and satisfying. It’s absolutely fantastic at characterization. It also creates some peaks and valleys, though. There feels like fluff occurring after we establish the backstories for those pertinent members. Interestingly, the truths this tells, being the real bands and people and sometimes events, don’t quite do their job. Usually you stuff the truth in so when the lies hit the reader suspends disbelief and doesn’t notice the buttressing. But with all stories like this I find that the stuffing shows. Name dropping sounds like name dropping. It feels like an agenda is had. And here it is decidedly very rose-coloured in its glasses, imo. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun. Especially Cohen and Joplin. But stories like this are so ubiquitous it’s hard to avert your gaze from what’s to come. The ending has its inevitably, which you want…. But it does lack any surprise. Had this been truncated somewhat I’d have likely not noticed as much. But as is, we spend a lot of time on a particular person and it is the personification of the story of this time, the character that is this person, and the lesson we have probably already internalized. However. This hits 5 stars multiple times. One of which is a particular crossover with our man De Zoet. Spoilers abound from here on out—you have been warned—trespass not :| There is a significant revelation in this that ties into The Thousand Autumns and it is very, very cool. A huge high. There are things left uncodified in that story that left me wanting. This ALSO crossed with Number9dream and Ghostwritten, with a particular Mongolian—whom, I learned, is not Dr. Marnius, nor Xi Lo! Very cool. But also, who the F is this fellow then?? An unaffiliated atemporal being, apparently But wait! Even more world building occurs: Enomoto has been imprinted in Ze Zoet since Thousand Autumns, across Generations. Making a case for generational memory and trauma and how that works in this world. Then, there is also Luisa Rey’s storyline colliding with our Elf here, in spectacularly queer ways. It’s a lovely crossroads and it is not specifically mentioned that Elf’s wife at the end is her, but we assume so. Why isn’t it specified though, one wonders? Black Swan Green, we have a Bolivar character that may be our young protagonist? I believe? If I recall correctly! There is the Hershey connection from Bone Clocks. There’s the appearance of a wild Cloud Atlas sextet. The only thing not tied in directly is Slade House, possibly. But really, this is the first book I’ve read where you get something—sometimes Large things—out of reading all the other books and that was wicked. As I said. So close to 5 stars. If not for some fluff and the larger Dean storyline going as it did, I think it would have been.

A sprawling novel about the rise and fall of a band in the 1960s. Mitchell structures the novel so each album is a “book” and the songs are its chapters. Each band member and their manager is well developed, and I particularly enjoyed the backstories that influenced each song. There’s also a lot of 60s-era “scene:” other artists of the day, LSD, prejudice against men sporting long hair, etc. that was occasionally distracting yet colorful. I recently watched the music documentary Laurel Canyon, so I enjoyed reading about the band members of Utopia Avenue spending time there whilst touring the West Coast. Big themes of loss, love, mental illness, familial relationships are explored. Since I’ve read many of Mitchell’s previous novels, I was not too confused by the sudden appearance of horologists toward the end. But if I had not, I might have given it a lower rating.

It's not a perfect book, but it may be the perfect summer read. Especially for anyone who enjoys rock music and music history. Utopia Avenue is the story of a band, in the late 1960s. Their formation, and their development, are told primarily through the arcs of three main characters: the bass player, Dean Moss, the keyboardist, Elf Holloway, and its lead guitarist, Jasper de Zoet. Each character struggles with finding themselves as the band finds its footing and its success. Each of these characters writes songs, and each chapter is titled by one of their songs. Each song is one important track in the growth of the band. Meanwhile, the band has countless encounters with nearly every notable rocker in popular music at the time, including, Lennon, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, a young Jackson Browne, David Bowie, and a memorable acid trip with Jerry Garcia. These encounters are mostly fun, and occasional vital parts of the growth of the band. These real rockers are wise oracles, offering guidance and lessons for the imaginary one. One character's arc ventures into the ridiculous. It nearly topples the entire novel. However, the final chapters center on Dean; the relatable everyman who struggles with family, finances, drugs, paternity, and every other common challenge of a successful performer. How Dean finds himself and finds peace in the final chapters is touching and eventually, heartbreaking. Dean's story saves the novel.

David Mitchell’s an interesting beast. His early novels are highly experimental, but throughout the years he’s somehow gotten softer, more traditional. What hasn’t changed, and what’s even grown more prominent, is the sense that he isn’t really writing different novels. He is really writing one big, hugely interconnected novel using within surprisingly traditional narratives. He’s experimenting, just in a different sense. Of course, this kind of experimentation is not without its risks. Navel gazing is on the horizon and the kind of overarching ur-novel he seems to be writing might not be accessible to the non-fan. Fortunately, if anything, Utopia Avenue is more accessible to the general public than ever, while still offering enough depth and little references that the determined Mitchell-fan won’t fine left disappointed. At its core Utopia Avenue is the dream of any middle aged writer with a fascination for music. The story of a British rock band in the 60’s. Sex, drugs and rock and roll, but also surprisingly insightful discussions of art, music, sexism, and everything that made the 60’s the apparently unique decade it was. The dialogue and dynamic between the four band members is deep and feels authentic, and their overall story is rewarding. The rush of that first radio hit, the first appearance on top of the pops, and the American debut are some of the best sequences in the book and even the bits between offer enough conflict and tension to keep the reader going. It is a bit trite occasionally, the rock band odyssey doesn’t really have anything that hasn’t been done before, but it’s still done well. It isn’t all good though, and what consistently annoyed me was probably one of the big reasons Mitchell even wrote this book. Writing any book on a 60’s rock band gives plenty opportunities of introducing rock god cameos, and Mitchell definitely hasn’t skimped on those. They’re all a bit *too* perfect though, all a bit too meaningful. Of course Bowie shows up to talk about all the weird characters he’s gonna do and of course Leonard Cohen waxes eloquently about the life of the American urbanite. It all feels a bit trite, a bit by the numbers. But of course, the perfect record doesn’t exist and every b-side always has a few clunkers. In that sense, Utopia Avenue might be an even better representation of rock ‘n roll in the 60’s. Rock on David Mitchell, rock on.