Utopia Avenue: A Novel

A new David Mitchell book is a bit of an event for me, which is understandable - when the man who wrote Cloud Atlas, The Bone Clocks, Slade House, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, and more writes a new book, well, you sit up and listen. So when I say that Utopia Avenue probably ranks low among Mitchell's bibliography, please understand where I'm coming from: by almost any standards, Utopia Avenue is a treat - a wonderful, fun, humane journey through the 1960s British (and American) rock scene, done in Mitchell's trademark shifting points of view. No, it doesn't compare to Cloud Atlas or The Bone Clocks, but it's not trying to; it's (generally) telling a more lowkey, intimate story, and in doing that, it succeeds beautifully on the whole.The titular Utopia Avenue is a 60s rock group, made up of four members, each picked by a manager with an eye for talent and the idea to make a sort of supergroup out of brilliant unknowns. On the keyboards and vocals, there's Elf Holloway, former folk icon who's now trying to make her way on her own after breaking up the duo she formed with her boyfriend. Lead guitar? You've got the brilliant but mentally ill Jasper de Zoet, whose astonishing guitar playing is a way of escaping the voices in his head. Dean Moss is our bassist, bringing in one of those guys who's been making his way through a number of bands that just haven't taken off, as well as a complicated relationship with his father. And on the drums, there's "Griff" - Peter Griffin - a jazz drummer from a bit more of a working class background than someone like Jasper.If the founding of Utopia Avenue sounds more like a commercial attempt to make a rock band, well, it is, but that doesn't keep the group from becoming special. With nearly every member contributing to the song writing, the group becomes something more than the sum of its parts, mixing and matching the players disparate styles to become something new and exciting for the scene. And away the band goes, as Mitchell plunges them and the reader into a tour of the 60s scene, with cameos aplenty from icons from John Lennon to Syd Barrett (whose parallels with Jasper are evident to anyone who knows anything about Barrett) to Mama Cass to Janis Joplin and beyond. To some reviewers, the cameos have felt distracting and gratuitous; to me, it brought the scene to life, immersing us in this period of time where the music scene was coming to life and bouncing off of each other, making a sense of community that echoed the spirits of so many 60s rock fans.That works less well with some of the tie-ins to Mitchell's other work. Most of them are unobtrusive - a character (or, at least, someone with the same name) from Cloud Atlas has a big role to play; obviously, Jasper de Zoet is the descendent of the titular Jacob de Zoet; indeed, without getting into the weeds, nearly every Mitchell book has at least one character or reference in here. Generally, that's fine and fun; the major exception comes near the end of the book, where the book takes a wild turn into the world of one of Mitchell's other books. I don't really want to spoil it, as it's a wholly unexpected turn, but for one, I wonder what someone who'd never read that other book would make of this whole section; but more importantly, the section feels like a break from the immersive, down-to-earth, character-driven work of the rest of the novel. It's a thoroughly odd mood-breaker, and while I enjoyed the meta nature of it all, it feels like it weakens the book to some degree by being included.But that can't really detract from the many pleasures of Utopia Avenue, whose episodic, multi-narrator structure allows Mitchell to structure the book as a series of shorter episodes rather than a single narrative that has to hit every beat along the way. Moreover, by focusing on each of the various players in the band (using a clever conceit involving the songs from the band's various albums), Mitchell gets to play with a lot of different tales - sexual awakenings and repressed lesbian desires, fear of mental illness and one's own health, drug addictions, party scenes, family conflicts, old lovers, consequences of a hedonistic lifestyle, and so much more. In some ways, reading Utopia Avenue feels like a glimpse into the stories we've heard about so many rock bands of the period, from the debauchery to the strife; but in Mitchell's hands, it's somehow wonderfully specific and anchored to this unlikely quartet, whose manufactured relationship becomes something more. And whether they've run afoul of Italian authorities looking for a bribe or having a crisis on stage, Mitchell depicts it all with style and fun, somehow bringing every scene to life and making you feel the thrill of the crowd or the agony of isolation.Utopia Avenue is slighter than Cloud Atlas or The Bone Clocks, but that's by design; what you have here is something a bit more ambitious than the slice of life of Black Swan Green but without the genre-blurring of his later work. But that's all a choice, not a flaw, and the result is a wonderful tale of art, music, friendship, and a moment in time that influenced so man. Utopia Avenue is a treat, one that more than satisfied my expectations for a new Mitchell book - it's well-written, humane, human, thoughtful, profound, comic, and just a wonderful encapsulation of life.

As a Mitchell superfan- I've read all his books, and they're all mostly excellent- I can't help but walk away from this one disappointed. Which is odd, as I hugely enjoyed the book while reading it. Mitchell is an amazing writer- he makes his books super compelling, very readable. So he hooked me once again with this story, and I was loving it. I was actually recommending it to friends before I'd even finished it... which I never do. And this book is why.The good: I loved the story, the world, the characters. They're all likable, and I was completely invested in them. The world of late 60's Soho London was a lot of fun, really put you in a specific time and place (through rose colored glasses no doubt). Some reviewers have complained that it's unrealistic that these characters would run in to the famous musicians of the era, and that that feels fake. People, this is a fun work of fiction. I loved all the famous cameos in it, and if that doesn't work for you, I insist you're the person that picks apart anything to remove the fun. I found myself really rooting for everyone's success, and was very emotionally engaged. So well done, David, you do do that thing better than anyone else.The bad...1) There really isn't any narrative thrust. You're reading about a band finding successes (and some failures), and it's generally on an upswing, but that's about it. No real threat, mystery, etc (except the one below). So it's very much an 'along for the ride / just hanging out' type of vibe... in some ways similar to Tarantino's 'Once Upon A Time In Hollywood'... just hanging out with some cool characters. Which is fine, I enjoyed it, and it wouldn't work if the characters weren't so good. But I can see some people having a problem with this.2) Mitchell sets all of his books in a 'connected universe', similar to Stephen King. Each book has callbacks and hints as to the characters / situations of his other books. And in his other books, it all works pretty well. HOWEVER, in this one character has a 'thing going on' (to keep it spoiler free) that does sort of create an impending threat to the narrative... but then it suddenly veers HARD into a situation from his book 'The Bone Clocks', and it's jarring. To me, the best inter-connected callbacks are subtle and just a fun bit of context for constant readers- King does this very well. If you get it, you get it. If you don't, it doesn't change your experience of the current story. Here, Mitchell suddenly sends such a huge curveball that if someone hadn't read Bone Clocks they would have absolutely no idea what was going on. This tangent has zero to do with Utopia's plot, themes, characters... really anything. It's a clumsy, confusing, bizarre attempt to connecting this book to his others that could have been done in such a better way, or not at all.3) The ending was one of the worst endings proportional to a good book I have ever read (and I've read a lot of King, haha). Without giving anything away, Mitchell spends hundreds of pages blowing up a big balloon of good vibes, and then in the space of 10 pages pops it himself and creates the biggest downer of an ending. And the thing is, it's entirely unearned. Sure, a lot of real stories end in unexpected ways. But here, there's no reason or need for what happens. And the worst is that a lot of it is just told to us, happening offscreen, and we don't experience it- we're just told 'and then X, Y, and Z' happened. And THEN, he tries to clumsily reverse it a few pages later, make some kind of atonement. It's just... terrible. I tried to live with it for a few months, but it still doesn't sit right. There's a point about 15 pages before the actual ending that would have been a perfect way to end the story, as we're following one character in the morning, and in the context of the rest of the book it would have been a perfect ending with good vibes, man. What Mitchell does after this is just bizarre and weirdly manipulative.This ending sort of ruined the book for me, and (along with the even more bizarre tangent above) is a reason I can't recommend this book to anyone buy a die-hard Mitchell fan who just wants to soak in his writing for a while, and then hopefully close the book a wee bit early.

Partly historical novel, partly weird science fiction, partly just a good story, this is a book I would recommend to a lot of people regardless of their age or interests. David Mitchell does it again!

IF you love GOOD music and synestetic wrtiting this is The Book:clever characters, great narrative, funny, deep, an amalgam of essencial elements that is the foundation of a bandHighly recommend

⚠ SPOILERFREIES REVIEWWie viele, hat mich Cloud Atlas zu Mitchell gebracht. Jahre vor dem Film. Ich habe danach sofort seine älteren Sachen gelesen. Ich habe jedes weitere Buch sehnsüchtig erwartet. Und ich habe gelernt, dass nicht jeder Roman automatisch mein Geschmack sein muss, nur weil ich Mitchells andere Romane mag. The 1000 Autumns of Jacob de Zoet war so ein Fall. The Bone Clocks hingegen hat mich wieder komplett umgehauen und hier ist nun "Utopia Avenue", ein wilder Ritt durch die Popwelt der ausklingenden 60s, voller Musik, Drogen, Sex und Revolution.Mitchell hat sich für mich als ein Autor etabliert, der so ziemlich jeden Charakter glaubhaft vermitteln kann. Egal ob nun eine rebellische Teenagerin, ein Kriegsreporter im Irak, einen rüpelhaften Rentner oder eben eine Gruppe sehr diverser Typen, die zusammen in den 1960rn eine Psychedelic Folk Band gründen und damit sogar einigermaßen Erfolg haben. Egal ob nun die anfangs schüchterne Folksängerin Elf, der ruppige Drummer Griff, der Lebenskünstler und Bassist Dean, der in sich gekehrte, eigenbrötlerische Gitarrenvirtuose Jasper oder ihr flamboyanter Manager Levin ... jede dieser individuelle Perspektiven wird in diesem Setting ausgiebig ergründet und miteinander verknüpft. Und das halt sehr gekonnt.Es wäre nicht Mitchell, wenn der Aufstieg und die Anekdoten rund im die Band Utopia Avenue schon der ganze Roman wären. Mitchell gibt den Charakteren das Spotlight, all ihren Verstrickungen und persönlichen Konflikten, Hintergründen, ihren Leben. Nichts ist einfach in diesem Roman, genau wie in der Realität. Und wenn das Buch, nach einem zugegebenermaßen sehr ruhigen Einstieg, dann so langsam an Fahrt gewinnt, macht es sich auch bezahlt, sämtliche anderen Mitchell-Bücher gut zu kennen. Denn die üblichen Querverweise, Reminiszenzen und Charakter-Cameos mal außen vor, wird hier gegen Ende auch auf Vorwissen aus seinen vorherigen Werken gesetzt (kein Spoiler, da man bereits bei den Namen der Hauptcharaktere 1 und 1 zusammenzählen kann).Erzählt ist Utopia Avenue fantastisch, auch die Aufteilung des Werkes in Alben und Songtitel mit dem jeweiligen Autoren des Songs als Protagonisten des jeweiligen Kapitels ist sehr clever. Mitchell spielt auch hier sein Gespür für interessante, sympathische Charakterstudien aus, ohne dass diese einseitig oder zu freundlich werden. Auch sein Faible für ausgiebige Recherche wird hier wieder offensichtlich. Die Ära und ihr sozialer wie politische Kontext sind sehr gut portraitiert und erschaffen eine vielschichtige Bühne für die Protagonisten. Hier und da verliert der Autor sich auch ein wenig in Details und ausufernden Referenzorgien, aber im Großen und Ganzen mochte ich diese Reise in die späten 60er, vor allem aber die vier wunderbar ergründeten Bandmitglieder Elf, Griff, Dean und Jasper.FAZIT: großartiger Roman über 4 sehr verschiedene Menschen, die zusammen eine sehr verrückte Phase ihres Lebens in einer der kulturell aufregendsten Zeiten der modernen Geschichte verbracht haben, mit sämtlichen Höhen, Tiefen und Popstar-Gastauftritten, die man sich vorstellen kann. Hier und da zwar etwas zäh, aber absolut lesenswert.

Entertaining but not the same depth and wonder as some of his previous work - like Bowie’s Scary Monsters - the magical realism of Knock Knock did not work for me, although Jasper is my favorite character.

Wonderful reading, classic David Mitchell, and always something new.Loved the references to other novels, fell for the musicians who make an appearance though the story.Special mention #1 for Joni Mitchell.Special mention #2: the Morrissey lyrics.Looking forward to the next chapter in the David Mitchell übernovel!!