I cried a little bit when I realised I wouldn’t find them. There is certainly nothing in Utopia Avenue that causes me to change my mind.When I finished David Mitchell’s new novel about a psychedelic 1960s folk-rock band, I started up to search for Utopia Avenue on YouTube. I am a big fan of David Mitchell’s work (perhaps I should have led with that fact!), which I have always found to be inventive, enlightening, and wildly entertaining. Still, these are minor quibbles inasmuch as I really enjoyed every moment I spent reading this book. Also, while we get to know a lot about the lives of Elf and Dean, the characters of Griff and Levon seemed somewhat underdeveloped by comparison. Of more substance is the frightening and angst-ridden journey of Jasper, himself a distant relation of Jacob de Zoet, that provides serious devotees of the author with the most direct connection to his past work.So, does the attempt to combine so many disparate points-of-view and themes into a single novel-even one that runs almost 600 pages long-actually work? My answer is yes, although there were times when Jasper’s tale felt quite far removed from those comprising the rest of the book. Marinus ( The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet), Crispin Hershey ( The Bone Clocks), and even the ubiquitous moon-gray cat (last seen in Slade House). Utopia Avenue is no different in that respect, with significant roles for characters who have appeared elsewhere, including Luisa Rey ( Cloud Atlas), Dr. As even casual fans know, this author loves to create interconnected worlds throughout his catalog while also exploring some dark and supernatural psychological topics. Except that this is a David Mitchell novel, so you know that there is going to be a lot more going on. Improbable? Sure, but then that’s part of the fun.If all of that sounds like straightforward, albeit interesting, storytelling, you would be correct. The foursome quickly becomes a touchstone for some of the most important events of the era as they connect with such as luminaries as John Lennon, David Bowie, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Brian Jones, Cass Elliott, Graham Nash, David Crosby, Jimi Hendrix, and Jerry Garcia. Along the way, Mitchell gives the reader plenty of joy and heartbreak involving the personal lives of the bandmates and does a remarkable job of recreating that heady, almost mystical time in history. The heart of the tale then chronicles the band’s unlikely rise out of the desolate London bar scene to the top of the international charts (near the top, anyway), all in a mere two years. Beginning with the backstories of four struggling musicians-keyboardist Elf Holloway, bassist Dean Moss, guitar prodigy Jasper de Zoet, and drummer Griff Griffin-the narrative proceeds to tell how their up-and-coming manager Levon Frankland assembles them into Utopia Avenue. The two are discussing the difficulty of putting into words what it means to experience music when Zappa, citing the legendary Charles Mingus, says “I’ll take ‘indescribable’…writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” Whether that attribution is accurate (or even appropriate to the time period), the quote summarizes perfectly the high-wire act the author sets out for himself to capture the essential drama of the struggles and triumphs of a psychedelic-folk-rock band starting out in England during the Summer of Love.Without a doubt, though, Mitchell succeeds in doing just that in this wonderful novel. There is a great passage near the end of Utopia Avenue, David Mitchell’s engaging look at the British music scene circa 1967-68, in which one of the members in the fictional band of the book’s title is at a party talking to Frank Zappa. Do we change the world or does the world change us? Utopia means 'nowhere' but might it be somewhere, if only we knew how to look? Read more David Mitchell's new novel is the story of Utopia Avenue and its age of riots in the street and revolutions in the head of drugs and thugs, schizophrenia, love, sex, grief, art of the families we choose and the ones we don't of fame's Faustian pact and stardom's wobbly ladder. Emerging from London's psychedelic scene in 1967 and fronted by folksinger Elf Holloway, guitar demigod Jasper de Zoet and blues bassist Dean Moss, Utopia Avenue released only two LPs during its brief blazing journey from the clubs of Soho and draughty ballrooms to Top of the Pops and the Top 10 to Amsterdam, Rome and a fateful American fortnight in the autumn of 1968. Utopia Avenue may be the most extraordinary British band you've never heard of. The hotly anticipated new novel from the internationally bestselling author of The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas.
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