I would like to thank the Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley for providing a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review. I’ve read two other novels by David Mitchel and enjoy his style. So I was really looking forward to this book. It did not disappoint. This was a very engrossing read throughout. I found it to be one of David Mitchell’s more linear novels and more straightforward than Cloud Atlas, a novel I nevertheless loved. Utopia Avenue is a novel that is organized into parts that are named by the titular band’s albums. Each chapter is named for a song in the album and told from the perspective of a band member. So while unweaving the story, we get the creation and backstory of each song. I found this structure innovative, appropriate for the story it told, and it helped drive the narrative forward quite effectively. The plot revolves around the creation of a rock band in the late 60’s. The band consists of four very different musicians--folk singer Elf Holloway, blues bassist Dean Moss, drummer Peter Griffin, and guitarist Jasper de Zoet--who combine each of their influences to form a unique amalgam of folk, R&B, jazz, and rock. The music is influenced by both the personal events in the lives of the bandmates and historical events going on around them, among them the riots that followed Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination and those that took place during the Vietnam war. There are also appearances by beloved musicians of the era, like Brian Jones, Steve Marriot, and Syd Barrett, to name a few. This novel had some profound musings on the meaning of life, and the role that music and other arts play in shaping history and society. While there is plenty of musical terminology in the book, I found it accessible as someone who is not well versed in music theory. And I really enjoyed the song lyrics and their significance to the band members. Those who have read other David Mitchell novels will love the connections and references to his other works. Still, if this is your first David Mitchell novel, there is still much to enjoy. I loved Utopia Avenue and highly recommend it to both fans of David Mitchell and anyone looking for a fun read.

I usually love David Mitchell's writing. His books are thought provoking and quirky and completely engrossing. Unfortunately I did not find this one to be so. I was only able to read 25% and gave up. I did not find the characters compelling or even interesting. The insertion of famous names into the story was, I'm sure, to create a strong sense of time and place and to add an authenticity to the story of an up-and-coming rock band in the 60s, but, to me, it was just distracting and actually took me out of the story. At times, Utopia Avenue reminded me of "The Commitments" which I loved, but this one just left me bored and unattached. Perhaps I'll finish it later, but for now - no.

I don't generally read band fiction, but something about this book made me want to pick it up. Maybe it was the well-known author attached. Either way it was such an engaging read right from the start and even when you know generally how these kinds of stories go (the band gets together, they toil, the make it big, things go downhill, they break up, etc) it was still thrilling to dive into a new chapter, a new perspective, especially that of Jasper, whose chapter were a bit of a fever dream. This was a really cool trip (hehe) through the swinging sixties and I'm glad that I gave this book a try.

Few writers are as fascinated by the intricacies of interconnectedness as David Mitchell. Fewer still have the literary skill to coherently translate those complexities to the page.

Yet the British author has built his entire oeuvre on doing just that. From his very first novel – 1999’s “Ghostwritten” – he has shown a propensity for creating layered stories featuring a multitude of perspectives from multiple points of view. And thanks to a wonderful narrative broadmindedness and wildly impressive attention to craft and detail, each of those meticulously-constructed books shares connections with all the other works in Mitchell’s canon, binding them all together in a sort of metanarrative – a David Mitchell Literary Universe (DMLU), if you will.

Mitchell’s ninth and newest book is “Utopia Avenue.” It’s a story of the rise and fall of the titular band, an eclectic group of ahead-of-their-time musicians that fate (and an enterprising manager) brings together in London in the late 1960s. Through this idiosyncratic crew, Mitchell explores the peculiarities of fame and success during one of the weirdest, wildest times in the history of popular music.

It’s a sweeping psychedelic story, an alternate pop history that features a slew of famous and familiar names crossing the paths of our heroes in the course of their ascent. It’s a brightly colored and brutal fable that is equal parts celebration and warning regarding the raw power inherent to music. The pull of creative forces can sometimes be beyond our control, leaving the creator no choice but to hang on tight and hope for the best – a best that is far from guaranteed.

London’s music scene in the 1960s is one of the most creatively fallow on the planet. Band after band seeks to follow in the footsteps of iconic groups like the Beatles or the Rolling Stones; all are in pursuit of that elusive combination of creative and commercial success. Most of these bands form organically, through gradually evolving relationships between the players.

Levon Frankland has a different idea. The Canadian expat – a relatively small-time music manager – has an idea. Instead of waiting for the next great band to form on its own, why not put it together himself?

He recruits Dean Moss, a bassist and songwriter from Gravesend, first. He takes Dean to see a band in order to watch two of its members – the strange and brilliant Dutch guitarist Jasper de Zoet and the foul-mouthed jazz drummer Peter “Griff” Griffin. Frankland proposes that the three try to play together and see what happens. Not long after, he introduces Elf Holloway – keyboard player and formerly one-half of a moderately successful folk duo – into the mix.

And thus Utopia Avenue is born.

The wild collection of influences – Dean’s working-class blues, Elf’s folk-pop sensibility and Jasper’s generational virtuosity – makes the band unlike anything else on the scene. And with all three writing songs for the group, the genre blend remains front and center. Their ascent is somehow both halting and rapid, with plenty of bumps as they climb. And consider the time and place, well … there are a lot of notable names who appear along the way.

But even as the band’s star begins to rise, there are forces both internal and external that stand in opposition. Some are merely obstacles to musical stardom, but others present far more impactful and potentially dangerous problems. It’s up to this band of misfits, these square pegs that have finally found their place, to embrace the good and protect one another from the bad.

“Utopia Avenue” offers the elaborate connections we’ve come to expect from David Mitchell. While the book doesn’t necessarily offer the physical scope of some of his other work, in terms of metaphysical scope, it’s spot-on. And the intertextual conversation with his other work is present as well, with numerous nods and allusions to multiple books in the DMLU.

The perspective shifts consistently, with each chapter centering on a band member – we get the individual journeys of Dean, Elf and Jasper even as the overall arc of the band plays out (sorry Griff – Mitchell opts to focus on the three songwriters; as often happens, the drummer is the forgotten man), with enough overlap that we sometimes get multiple looks at the same event.

Mitchell’s affinity for genre trappings isn’t as prominent here as we’ve seen in many of his other works; for the most part, “Utopia Avenue” is relatively straightforward; things do get weird in a mystical/magical sort of way, but only briefly. Otherwise, we simply follow the rise of the band as they move from sparsely attended shows at clubs and pubs up to a world of chart success and trans-Atlantic tours.

It’s an engaging portrait of that particular period, a stylized snapshot of the scene. The hyperrealized cameos from real-life music figures are a delight; densely intellectual and wordy statements of creative wisdom tumbling out of, well … name a prominent figure from the music world of the time. They’re probably around, at least for a minute or two. David Bowie and Brian Jones and Syd Barrett and Janis Joplin and John Lennon and Leonard Cohen and on and on and on – they’re all here, dispensing tightly-packed nuggets of insight. Through this idealization, we see the Utopia Avenue crew perhaps perceiving their heroes as somehow more than they are.

(I’ll be frank – I would REALLY love to know what the music of Utopia Avenue sounds like. Mitchell does good work in describing it stylistically, but as Frank Zappa once told us, “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture” – a quote that Mitchell has Zappa himself offer up in the book. We get lyrics and an idea of how people react to the songs, but not the songs in full. It’s an interesting wrinkle to the overall experience of the book.)

“Utopia Avenue” evokes the spirit of the ‘60s while leaning into its own vision of the time and place. It’s a deconstruction of the pursuit of fame – the thrill of the chase and the chaos that comes with success. It’s about the double-edged sword of creation, the gifts and curses inherent to harnessing the power of art. It’s about the voices surrounding us and within us … and choosing which ones warrant our attention. And in the end, it’s about the music.

Long live rock and roll.

David Mitchell who penned "Cloud Atlas" returns with a book that is part of the Mitchell "universe" where characters from his other books make appearances and it's meant to be a tapestry that you can follow.

Fans of the recent "Daisy Jones and the Six" will enjoy this book about a band that takes formation that then get caught up in drug trafficking, a band member whose body is being taken over by something they call "knock knock" because that's the sound it makes, and Elf whose life as part of the band affects them all.

Casual readers will enjoy this work that at parts is a fictional history of a band that has its ups and downs but this one is truly for Mitchell fans.

I loved this book. If it weren't for one chapter it would have absolutely been five stars. I was immediately invested in the characters & their stories. I loved that the group was solid throughout the book & all the tension came from outside sources. I've never been in a band, but I'm certain the relationship between the Utopia Avenue members as well as their relationship with their manager is what every band dreams of. I also really liked how the parts were named after the band's albums and the chapters for their songs. One thing I always look forward to with David Mitchell's books is trying to find the hidden connections with his previous books. I've dipped my toes into the "Mitchellverse" before, but now I'm ready to dive in head first and read the rest of his books.

I want to go on record as being a David Mitchell fan. I believe that The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Black Swan Green, and Cloud Atlas are all brilliant books. So, when I was offered an advance copy of Utopia Avenue, I was thrilled and couldn't wait to read it. What a disappointment awaited me.

The basic plot is a bit of a cliche: we follow a rock band from their inception in the gleaming eye of a manager, who brings together four seemingly disparate talents into a group which, inevitably, becomes very successful. Herein lies the first problem I had with this novel: this process is, I'm sure, very moving and fascinating to someone directly involved, but to the reader it is all rather dull. How many different ways can you describe the bass player putting down a funky beat, the lead guitarist ripping off an amazing riff, and so on? Not many, I guarantee you.

The era involved is the late 60s, and the scene is rock in both Great Britain and the United States, so naturally famous names show up. Oddly, though, none of them are truly vibrant characters in this story, so their inclusion seems more like name-dropping than anything else. True, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, and Jerry Garcia have a few meaningful lines, but others, including John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, and a whole host of others, are merely there to preserve a bit of verisimilitude, but add nothing, which is a shame.

Still, Mitchell is a very talented writer and he has created extremely likeable characters here, so I was willing to go along with the novel to a point (though I was thinking it overlong and in need of editing). There are also a couple of subplots involving, respectively, homosexuality and psychosis (don't worry, these are not spoilers) that have some passing interest, though the supernatural involvement with the insanity plot seems a bit out of place here; still, not truly objectionable (and a neat tie-in to a previous Mitchell novel). So far, so good.

But let me not mince words. I hated the ending. Hated, hated, hated it. Have I made myself clear? Loathed. Detested. Abhored. Despised. Abominated. Until the ending, I was willing to go along and think of this as a perfectly acceptable three-star read, which to me is a book worth your time, but not worth going out of your way to read. The fact that I could hate the ending as much as I do and still give this two stars is a testament to Mitchell's raw skill. How unfortunate that he chose an emotionally manipulative ending that does not match in any way with the arc of the story he established to that point. Oh, I am aware that he can do whatever he wishes with his characters, and he is welcome to do so, but as a reader I have every right to object, and I do. Give this a miss.

To date, David Mitchell hasn’t written a book I didn’t like, and this one is no exception. In fact, it will be one of my favorites because of its subject matter. I don’t always fully understand Mitchell’s work, especially the horology storyline that runs through his most recent books. But I love the way he combines complicated characters, places, and situations with beautiful writing and a sense of the fantastic.

Utopia Avenue is the name of a band in 1968 London. Four musicians from broken bands are brought together by Levon Frankland, an inspired and unusually ethical manager. Their disparate musical styles and personalities form something much greater than the sum of its parts, which I suppose is true of all great bands. In fact, much of this book feels like an homage to the rock music of the 60s. Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, and Jerry Garcia are just a few of the famous characters who interact with the band over the course of this novel.

If you love a good story about a band, this novel has it all. Mitchell plays with every rock band trope you can think of, from the promiscuous lead to the drummer who’s mostly ignored. Think Almost Famous or Daisy Jones and the Six, but much better.

The strength of this book lies in the character development of its three narrators: Dean Moss, Elf Holloway, Jasper de Zoet (you’ll recognize this name from other Mitchell novels), and occasionally drummer Griff and manager Levon. These characters struggle with the usual things: sex, money, drugs, family, fame, death, mental illness, artistic creation, and life on the road. Mitchell turns each band member’s personal crisis into a song, and frames each chapter as a single on one of the band’s albums.

I absolutely loved Jasper’s character and his story can be viewed in multiple ways, which is again what makes Mitchell such a strong writer. I also loved Elf’s character, who struggles as a talented woman in what people see as a man’s field.

And in additional to the rich history in this book of rock and roll, war protests, and the hippie movement, this book takes you from London to Rome to New York to San Francisco. I love books with a strong sense of place, and Mitchell brings that to this book, covering many historical music venues and the feel of these cities in the late 60s. I especially liked the way the band members react to seeing California for the first time.

As I mentioned above, there’s a horology storyline that threads through this novel. If you’re familiar with Mitchell, you won’t be surprised by this, but readers who are new to Mitchell will be. I’m sure someone will do a detailed analysis of all the threads that connect this book to Mitchell’s other books (I’m picturing one of those giant string maps in detective shows). I’m sure I missed most of these connections, except for the obvious de Zoet and Marinus connections, but many of the minor characters sounded familiar.

The end blew me away. I stayed up well into the night finishing this book, which is unusual for me. Then I had to reread the end the next day because I wasn’t terribly alert the first time around.

David Mitchell does it again. Enough said.

Note: I was fortunate to receive an advanced review copy of this novel from NetGalley and publisher Random House. The book publishes on July 14, 2020.

The publicist for Chicago Humanities Festival is sending my article to the publisher. I did not review the book. I used it as a resource for an article about a livestreamed conversation with the author. Here's a link to my article.

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https://thirdcoastreview.com/2020/07/18/conversations-two-screenwriters-talk-about-their-new-novels-utopia-avenue-and-antkind/

I DIDN'T REVIEW THE BOOK SO THE STAR RATING IS NOT VALID.

Utopia Avenue is David Mitchell’s eighth novel. It is five years since he published his last novel Slade House. What kind of novel is this one? Well, it’s long – almost 600 pages. It centers on a British rock band from its inception in early 1987 to its sudden dissolution in 1988. The group brings out two albums in those two years and a third album comes out posthumously in 2019. The book is divided into six sections corresponding to the six sides of the three albums, and each song title constitutes a chapter heading.

It is an eclectic band. Dean the bass guitarist plays the blues. Jasper the lead guitarist gives the band its psychedelic character. Elf comes from folk. And Griff the drummer originates in jazz. Each has an interesting back story. Dean has an abusive drunk for a father; his promiscuity has serious consequences for him and the band. Jasper spent two years in a mental clinic suffering from “severe aural schizophrenia,” which threatens to return after joining the band. Elf has a boyfriend who two-times her before she discovers what her true sexual orientation is. Griff is involved in a car accident with his brother.

Utopia Avenue has been called a realist novel. A label only applied to one other of Mitchell’s novels, Black Swan Green (2006), a semi-autobiographical novel. But even Black Swan Green inhabits a liminal space between material and spiritual reality. Similarly Utopia Avenue constantly undermines the physical world with the irruption of the supernatural. Or is it with the psychological?

The key to this is Jasper. As a child he heard a Knock Knock in his head that was repressed for a matter of years by a drug that is starting to wear off as he joins the band. From the start he appears to act a part rather than live it. He is unable to process emotion of any kind. He has to tell himself to say “Thank you.” He “guesses it’s his turn to speak.” He cannot tell whether Dean is being ironic. He “acts a smile.” Appropriately he asks, “‘Do you think reality is just a mirror for something else?’”

Much the most developed character, Jasper only lives fully inside his head. Slowly he learns that Knock Knock is an evil character from an earlier Mitchell novel, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (2010) – or (Mitchel always allows an “or”) – Knock Knock is “an unknown.” It represents the irruption of the unknown into the world of the known.

Mitchell is well known for his habit of “re-hiring” characters and re-using incidents from his earlier work. He has said, “Each of my books is one chapter in a sort of sprawling macronovel. That’s my life’s work.” In this case the evil character turns out to be a monk, Enomoto, who flees his body as he is being poisoned to occupy Jasper’s great, great, great grandfather. Once the book reaches the long explanation of all this pre-history given to Jasper by Marinus, another benign immortal who has featured in several of Mitchell’s previous novels, I find myself having doubts. Mitchell’s use of the supernatural worked well in Cloud Atlas (2004) where it remained implicit. But once it became explicit, which happened from The Bone Clocks (2014) on, I couldn’t help feeling that Mitchell was appropriating material from popular adventure stories in which everyone is either a hero or a villain. Too over-simplified. Too Boys’ Own.

Mitchell does try to treat this supernatural material with skepticism. After Marinus has filled Jasper in with the supernatural back-story, he says, “The chain of events would fill a hefty novel.” He is referring ironically of course to The Thousand Autumns where these events occurred, which ran to almost 500 pages. Also the non-realist material does allow Mitchell to suggest that individual identity is only a facet of life seen whole. He neither believes nor misbelieves in the existence of a soul. As Elf asks herself near the end of the novel, “Is the soul a real thing?” She adds, “I wondered then as I wonder now.”

I also found the sheer proliferation of famous musicians and stars of the late 1980s overdone at times. Within a page Elf runs into both Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett and Allen Ginsberg. At a film producer’s party in London members of the band meet Brian Jones (The Stones), Jimmy Hendrix, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Keith Moon (The Who), not to mention Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon. At least Mitchell resorts to irony to anticipate his readers’ objections by having Dean remark, “There’s too many famous people at this party. It’s bloody ridiculous.” Mitchell also has Jasper run into David Bowie (before he’s famous) on the stairs when Bowie says, “I was on my way up. Now I’m going down. Is that a metaphor?” Clumsy is what that is.

Still, Mitchell employs language to wonderful effect at times. A passing van has “a phlegmy carburetor.” The cellar of Soho coffee bar “is as hot, dank, and dark as armpits.” Jasper meets a friend’s girlfriend “whose eyelashes curl and interlace like Venus flytraps.” Elf wakes up in New York: “An American moon is wedged between two skyscrapers, like a nickel fallen down a crack.” What an appropriate simile. And he can be witty, as in this newspaper headline: “UTOPIA AVENUE IN DIRE STRAITS.”

Mitchell is always worth reading. He can be original and banal in the same book. Above all he consistently erases the border between the material and spiritual/psychic worlds. When Jasper remarks, “The reality isn’t at all like the fantasy,” his girlfriend responds, “When did that ever matter?”

Booklist got it right: "Mitchell's readers can be excused if they greet a new novel by this unalloyed genius with both goose-pimply anticipation and tredpidation over meeting the challenge." That was exactly my feeling when I saw that he had a new book, and that I would get to read an ARC. While reading, the trepidation over whether I would measure up to the book lasted to the very last page, but was joined by engagement, pure pleasure, and that broken-hearted feeling that only the very best writers can give you.

Meet Utopia Avenue, the band that mixes psychedelic with folk with much more and amazing results: Dean Moss on bass, trying to make his Gravesend roots proud; Elf Holloway on piano, who hates questions about being a woman in a band with three guys; Jasper de Zoet (yes, the same de Zoet family), guitar virtuoso with inner demons; and Peter Griffin on drums, who's happy with his role sitting at the back of the band. With Dean, Elf, and Jasper each writing songs and doing vocals, the band's albums have an eclecticism that propels the group up the charts and into company that includes the biggest names of the era.

For me, not knowing much about the music scene beyond being able to recognize the names in question, this book was much more about the people in the band than the band as a whole. Chapters tell the story from the perspective of each band member, plus their manager, Levon, and each character comes vividly to life, bringing with them the music industry, London's SoHo, their families, and their own dreams and doubts.

Mitchell's fans will understand the slightly mystical references, and while other readers might be put off by a certain chapter where horology takes the stage, I encourage them to push through it. The pay-off is well worth it.

For fan's of Mitchell's previous books, or anyone who likes a good rock 'n' roll story.

David Mitchell is a perennial favorite. He manages to cover such disparate genres masterfully, and Utopia Avenue is just another example. Characters and Easter eggs fans will love. An addition anyone who appreciates the scope of his world will love.

The rating is more 4.5 stars, but this is a David Mitchell. The book was a Netgalley acquisition. But I kept putting forward actually reading the book because 'Slade House' was a bad experience. I own Jacob de Zoet’s book and I haven’t read it. I also don’t like Horologists and hope Mitchell drops them already but I guess he’s too deep into it now. Yet another reason if I even needed reasons at this point - I HATED 'Daisy Jones and the Six' and the Utopians sounded uncomfortably similar.

But hey, it’s David Mitchell and I’m a fan girl. And I have to nitpick, even if I loved it to bits. It has all the things that would have turned me off had anyone else written it. It’s positively dripping with names it’s dropping. And it’s not just the sixties music scene names, it’s all the names from Mitchell’s own over-arching universe. There are horologists but they’re mercifully restricted to one chapter (that also pissed me off but more on that later). There’s a lot of tantalizing lyrics and there’s no music to accompany it. I’ve had to listen to a classic rock playlist to get over that. (About time! I have never liked Bowie, but after his cameo I decided to listen to his songs again and I actually like them now). There’s a cheat ending after making us pursue the red herring for so long. But the thing is, I was expecting it too, because that’s the only thing that made sense story-wise. Not that I like it much but okay, I’ll swallow it, only because the epilogue was good.

Jasper was my favorite character. I was invested in everyone else, not that I wasn’t. I enjoyed Griff and Dean pretty much from the start, I liked Elf’s growth into maturity. It’s rare in an ensemble piece that I don’t want to smash someone’s head with the book I’m reading, but I truly didn’t. These were cool people with compelling stories. One of them is a mental illness poster child who is slowly losing it, one reason the book both impressed and pissed me off is how well it’s portrayed in most of the book and how easily it’s ultimately handled, and anyone who knows Mitchell can figure out how. Half a star off for that but it’s Mitchell. So 5 stars it is.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC! I ended up doing a combination of reading the ARC and listening to the audiobook I borrowed from the library on release day. Ralph Lister is awesome - I would have missed all the bloody fookings otherwise.

Utopia Avenue is a fictional late 1960's British band. Manager Levon Frankland seemingly creates the perfect band out of thin air. Down and out Gravesender Dean Moss provides the bluesy base. Yorkshire workhorse drummer Griff is a jazz drummer. Folk Queen Elf is a gifted pianist and songwriter. Guitar virtuoso Jasper de Zoet (yes of the Dutch Shipping de Zoets) plays psychedelic riffs and hides a dangerous secret.

With a few notable exceptions, the book is fairly straight forward, following the highs and lows of the band's success. As always Mitchell's characters and time period jump off the page. Elf mentions Brian Eno's concept of The Scenius. The Scenius is "the genius of the scene..." Mitchell really brings this to life by including cameos of actual 1960's musicians and artists such as Brian Jones, David Bowie, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen and Jerry Garcia. These cameos are fun and I know I didn't catch all of them! They bring a level of authenticity to the time and place.

The four main characters feel very real. They each have a distinct voice that comes from different life experiences. Dean was born into a poor and abusive household, for him the trappings of fame may hinder his development. Jasper is a by blow of a wealthy family, but spent most of his youth in a boarding school. Elf is distinctively middle class and has held her own in a male dominated industry. I felt very attached to all of them.

I would be remiss not to discuss this book's role in the "Mitchell-verse." Easter eggs abound, there are callbacks to almost all of his previous works. I think Mitchell definitely wrote this book primarily for his fans. I do not think this book would be enjoyable without reading The Bone Clocks and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. I would also recommend reading Cloud Atlas and Ghostwritten. I loved seeing certain characters again, I feel like I got a better sense of them from seeing their earlier selves. At times the Easter Eggs took me out of the book. I would stop reading when I saw something that had to be referential and look it up.

All and all this is an excellent read, but it feels very final in terms of the Mitchell-verse. I can't wait to see what he does next!

David Mitchell's latest novel, Utopia Avenue, follows a band of the same name, as they make their way towards stardom in the latter half of the 1960s, taking place mostly in and around London, with various gigs and travels elsewhere, including Scotland, The Netherlands, Italy, and eventually the United States of America. The universe is the same as in other Mitchell works, and as with several of those works, some characters, settings, and plot points recur and intertwine, so a reader familiar with Mitchell's other work will catch references to Cloud Atlas, The Bone Clocks, and in particular The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. It is not necessary to read these other Mitchell novels before Utopia Avenue to understand the plot, but it does help in catching these references to Mitchell's other work. This world-building is a product of careful planning and expert writing on the part of Mitchell, and in more careless hands might fall apart or come across as over-the-top. In this manner, Utopia Avenue is a romp that follows a budding rock band's adventures, mishaps, loves and losses, overflowing with pop culture references, celebrity encounters, a tinge of the occult, and no shortage of sex, drugs, and rock and roll; at the same time, the under-girding theme seems to be an exploration of the value of art and the celebration of the artist as a creator and participant in a complex world of the personal and the political, the mundane and the supernatural.

Unlike the case with The Bone Clocks or Slade House, the various pieces of the supernatural in the Mitchellian world of psychosoterica and Horology are not especially prominent in Utopia Avenue, and stay confined largely to one of the main characters' subplot, in a somewhat similar manner to The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet. The episodes of the supernatural involving De Zoet punctuate the band's journey in the (mundane) world of rock and roll, and Utopia Avenue is better for it -- without the wonder regarding the nature of the mystery about De Zoet, the novel might just come across as pop-culture porn given the sheer number of celebrity encounters the bandmates have in Utopia Avenue. Indeed, there is a plethora of bumping into celebrities at parties and clubs and such, somewhat Forrest Gump-like at times. David Bowie, Brian Jones, Alan Ginsburg, Syd Barrett, Jimmy Savile, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Jerry Garcia, Francis Bacon, Frank Zappa and more appear throughout the novel, and it can be dizzying to keep track of all the celebrities encountered and, depending on the reader's familiarity with the subject material, it can also be difficult to keep track of which characters are drawn from the real world and which are drawn purely from fiction.

Some aspects of the plot adhere very closely to stereotypes and have an overuse of cliches in the storytelling, in particular the brief section of the story that takes place in Italy. Some of the musical performances of the band just blend together, and the imagery related to the music becomes somewhat repetitive, but this is partially mitigated by the personal dramas of each bandmate and by how a given band member is viewing the performance in relation to the band's progression to stardom. The writing is at its best when the band is discussing the nature of their art, how songs come differently to them, how their art relates to the personal and the political, and rejecting classification or labeling of their work; Mitchell does a good job of making the reader dislike certain characters, and the twists and turns are not entirely predictable, which helps to add suspense to Utopia Avenue.

For fans of Mitchell, Utopia Avenue will provide some of that Mitchellian world that has not seen a major novel since 2014. It is at times humorous, tragic, uplifting, and mysterious, although in some places the density of pop culture is overwhelming. The characters are well-written and their individual growth and journeys are engaging and charming in their own right, sometimes more than the growth of the band as a whole. The novel is ultimately a celebration of the artist, and how art derives meaning, and will leave the reader curious as to where and how elements from Utopia Avenue may appear in future works by Mitchell.

3.5 (rounded up)

This was my first book by David Mitchell and it was a lot to take in. It’s 1967 in London and Utopia Avenue is a newly formed band with a mishmash of members that include drummer Griff Griffin, blues bassist Dean Moss, guitar genius Jasper De Zoet and folk singer-pianist, Elf Holloway. While they come from different backgrounds (personally and musically), the foursome find harmony and chemistry with one another that transcends genres and expectations.

Mitchell is excellent at composing the intricate details of these characters and their stories through the braiding of time and consciousness. I lingered over the pages that took me deeper into the lives of each band member. Mitchell has me hooked into them and invested, right from the beginning.

However, the novel felt too long and too much for me. Mitchell included many encounters the band had with the famous stars of this time and I could see how much fun he was having writing about the music, drugs, sex and parties. The prose is colorful and addicting, inviting me to stay longer. But, like all parties, I felt I stayed too long. I was tired and started skimming over these experiences. I wished for less parties and more time with each of the characters that I felt were so uniquely complex yet relatable. From mental illness to sexuality, Mitchell explores various issues through each of the characters but never too deeply, which I longed for.

I’d recommend if you love historical fiction about music, especially from this era. If you have a short attention span, I’d skip.

In "Utopia Avenue," published today, Mitchell takes us through the twists and turns of a fictional psychedelic British sixties band on its rocky rise to popularity, particularly through exploring its members' crises, joys, fears, and triumphs.

It could have felt a little too abstract to read about the inspiration for made-up lyrics and melody, instrument technique, and imagined musical highlights on stage. (The fictional band focus reminded me, in a good way, of "Daisy Jones and the Six.") But Mitchell handles all of this deftly and made me care about a singer connecting with an audience, the cathartic heartbreak-writing of songs, and the magic spark of a performance.

With cameos galore (including fictional adventures and gems of wisdom) from real-life musicians like David Bowie, Joni Mitchell, Jerry Garcia, and the Rolling Stones, as well as authors and artists--not to mention wild parties, betrayals, leaps of faith, breakups, and tragedy. But Mitchell expertly builds the four band members--Jasper, Elf, Griff, and Dean, plus their beloved manager Levon--into rich characters you're rooting for through their individual ups and downs as well as through the triumphs and setbacks of the band Utopia Avenue.

If you like Mitchell's beautiful, offbeat, sometimes meandering and tough to pin down stories, you'll love this almost 600-page book. You zigzag with characters through bizarre alternate realities at times (whether due to a schizophrenic mind, being possessed by an evil being, or hallucinogenic drug effects). As always, there are references to other parts of the David Mitchell universe, such as: Horology! (It's not included to the extent it is in "the Bone Clocks," but it's essential to one character's continued existence.) Marinus and Jacob de Zoet make appearances, and the links to other books felt cozy, like I was coming home to more very welcome Mitchell madness and delving into another layer of his imagination.

Mitchell doesn't provide too easy or neat of an ending, but it feels fitting and left me satisfied. A really captivating book that kept me intrigued throughout.

I received an advance copy of this book through NetGalley and Random House in exchange for an unbiased review.

<I>Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with a free copy of this book in return for an honest review</I>.

This a beautifully written novel with excellent characters and a strong personal stories that ultimately felt a bit flat for me. This is mainly because I have zero knowledge about the London music scene in the 60's, so pretty much every reference given to help the reader imagine the setting and the band's music was entirely lost on me. That is, unfortunately, always the tricky part of writing about music.

It's still a great story, I just didn't find it to be as powerful as some of his other work.

Happy Pub Day to David Mitchell’s latest creation, Utopia Avenue!! And thank you @randomhouse and @netgalley for gifting me this advanced edition to review!

Ok y’all, if you’re already a fan of David Mitchell, I’ll start by telling you this book is different than his other works (Cloud Atlas, The Bone Clocks, Slade House, etc). It’s not dark and creepy, so I could actually sleep with the lights off. However, you still get snippets of strange inner dialogue which adds the perfect amount of unease. It was a super cool experience to embark on this (fictional) adventure of a lifetime as the cast rises in the music industry. I will warn y’all, this book is a BRICK at just shy of 600 pages. You really go on the full journey with Utopia Avenue.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the free e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell is a novel set in the '60s and follows Dean, Elf, Jasper and Griff, the members of the band called Utopia Avenue. This is a really ambitious novel that covers a good length of time and aims to tie into Mitchell's previous novels (I only caught Cloud Atlas references because that's the only other Mitchell novel I've read), reference real-life famous people and hit on some supernatural elements. I liked the characters on the whole, Jasper being my favorite. The supernatural elements worked quite well for me, and I almost would've liked to see more toward the end.

I would say that it's mostly successful, but the end feels more like a quick wrap-up than a fleshed out end of a novel. The ending also focused a good chunk on my least favorite of the three POV characters, so I didn't like it as much.