David Mitchell (1) (1969–)
Author of Cloud Atlas
For other authors named David Mitchell, see the disambiguation page.
About the Author
Image credit: David Mitchell during the annual Edinburgh International Book Festival at Charlotte Square Gardens on August 25, 2017 in Edinburgh, Scotland
Series
Works by David Mitchell
Associated Works
The Reason I Jump (2007) — Translator, some editions; Introduction, some editions — 2,237 copies, 139 reviews
Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8: A Young Man's Voice from the Silence of Autism (2017) — Translator and Introduction, some editions — 200 copies, 20 reviews
Light the Dark: Writers on Creativity, Inspiration, and the Artistic Process (2017) — Contributor — 162 copies, 5 reviews
The Decameron Project: 29 New Stories from the Pandemic (2020) — Contributor — 157 copies, 5 reviews
I'm With the Bears: Short Stories from a Damaged Planet (2011) — Contributor — 104 copies, 4 reviews
Freedom: Stories Celebrating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (2009) — Contributor — 85 copies, 2 reviews
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Mitchell, David
- Legal name
- Mitchell, David Stephen
- Birthdate
- 1969-01-12
- Gender
- male
- Education
- University of Kent (BA - English and American Literature, Comparative Literature)
- Occupations
- teacher
novelist - Awards and honors
- Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in The World (2007)
Granta's Best of Young British Novelists (2003) - Relationships
- Yoshida, Keiko (wife)
- Short biography
- David Stephen Mitchell (born 12 January 1969) is an English novelist and screenwriter.
He has written nine novels, two of which, number9dream (2001) and Cloud Atlas (2004), were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He has also written articles for several newspapers, most notably for The Guardian, and translated several books about autism from Japanese to English.
Following the release of the 2012 film adaptation of Cloud Atlas, Mitchell started working as a screenwriter alongside Lana Wachowski, one of Cloud Atlas' three directors; together with Aleksandar Hemon, they wrote the series finale of the television series Sense8 and the upcoming film The Matrix 4.
Mitchell was born in Southport in Lancashire (now Merseyside), England, and raised in Malvern, Worcestershire. He was educated at Hanley Castle High School and at the University of Kent, where he obtained a degree in English and American Literature followed by an M.A. in Comparative Literature.
Mitchell lived in Sicily for a year, then moved to Hiroshima, Japan, where he taught English to technical students for eight years, before returning to England, where he could live on his earnings as a writer and support his pregnant wife.
David Mitchell contributed the unpublished manuscript for 2015 to the Future Library project, of "From me flows what you call time". See the Guardian article; also the Bookseller article. - Nationality
- England
- Birthplace
- Southport, Lancashire, England, UK
- Places of residence
- Malvern, Worcestershire, England, UK
Hiroshima, Japan
Sicily, Italy
Ireland - Map Location
- England, UK
Members
Discussions
Cloud Atlas Group Read: Spoiler Thread Week Two in 75 Books Challenge for 2011 (October 2020)
BRITISH AUTHOR CHALLENGE OCTOBER 2015 - DUNMORE & MITCHELL in 75 Books Challenge for 2015 (January 2016)
Slade House: First Impressions in One LibraryThing, One Book (November 2015)
2014 Booker Prize longlist: The Bone Clocks in Booker Prize (September 2014)
Chat about... Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell in The SF&F Book Chat (March 2013)
Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: Week Two in 75 Books Challenge for 2011 (July 2011)
Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: Week One in 75 Books Challenge for 2011 (June 2011)
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet Group Read in 75 Books Challenge for 2011 (June 2011)
Cloud Atlas Group Read: Spoiler Thread Week One in 75 Books Challenge for 2011 (January 2011)
Cloud Atlas Group Read: General Discussion Thread in 75 Books Challenge for 2011 (January 2011)
Reviews
David Mitchell's latest novel tells the story of an English folk/blues/psychedelic rock band from the 1960s, and gives us glimpses into the lives and minds of each its five motley bandmates (and, to a lesser extent, their manager).
It's impossible, I'm afraid, to resist the urge to compare this with Taylor Jenkins Reid's Daisy Jones & the Six, which I read just a couple of months ago, although I don't know how fair that is to either book. They have a lot of similarities, as they both follow a show more band from its formation through its rise to stardom, and both do some interesting things with structure (an "oral history" format in Daisy Jones' case, and a non-linear narrative for each chapter in the case of Utopia Avenue). But Daisy Jones, I'd say, is a zippier and more emotionally satisfying read, whereas Utopia Avenue is more complex and contemplative, with more flashes of literary brilliance (and, sorry Ms. Reid, better song lyrics). But it's also a lot more flawed, in ways I find all the more frustrating because it was also so good in so many ways.
My biggest problem with it is in the part of the story that focuses on bassist Jasper de Zoet, which probably forms the closest thing to a plot the novel has. Not to put too fine a point on it, Jasper seems to have some kind of ghost buried in his mind trying to possess him, and the truly weird supernatural shenanigans surrounding said ghost just feel deeply, deeply out of place in this otherwise realistic novel. I like supernatural shenanigans a lot, in the right context, but this was absolutely not it. And while you can maybe try to chalk Jasper's hauntings up to psychosis instead of treating them as real, that fails to work, either, for a whole host of reasons. It also doesn't help that Jasper's story is clearly meant to tie in with a couple of Mitchell's other novels, which I have not yet read. (I have them on my ridiculously overfull TBR shelves, but I felt I ought to read this one first, since I got a free review copy and needed to, well, review it. Silly me, I didn't thank that would be a problem!) But while I probably would have gotten a bit more out of those story elements if I had read the earlier books, I very much doubt it would have helped all that much. And it's a bit sad, really, because Jasper is a good character and I can't help feeling he deserved a story I could actually believe in.
I also had problems with the ending, which I felt was abrupt, contrived, and unsatisfying, as well as some lesser issues, such as the way many of the celebrity cameos felt a little too awkwardly wink-wink to me.
And yet, despite all that, I can't help feeling this was a good book. It engaged me. I liked the characters, and found their world and their lives and their personalities interesting and worth spending time with. Mitchell's writing is often beautiful and insightful and emotionally resonant. But god damn, do I wish I could read the book it seems like it could have been, instead.
Rating: I'm giving this 4/5. Because it's a truly excellent novel burdened with some maddening flaws, which I guess knocks it down to just "good." And four stars works for "good." But I feel like there ought to be some kind of asterisk on that rating. show less
It's impossible, I'm afraid, to resist the urge to compare this with Taylor Jenkins Reid's Daisy Jones & the Six, which I read just a couple of months ago, although I don't know how fair that is to either book. They have a lot of similarities, as they both follow a show more band from its formation through its rise to stardom, and both do some interesting things with structure (an "oral history" format in Daisy Jones' case, and a non-linear narrative for each chapter in the case of Utopia Avenue). But Daisy Jones, I'd say, is a zippier and more emotionally satisfying read, whereas Utopia Avenue is more complex and contemplative, with more flashes of literary brilliance (and, sorry Ms. Reid, better song lyrics). But it's also a lot more flawed, in ways I find all the more frustrating because it was also so good in so many ways.
My biggest problem with it is in the part of the story that focuses on bassist Jasper de Zoet, which probably forms the closest thing to a plot the novel has. Not to put too fine a point on it, Jasper seems to have some kind of ghost buried in his mind trying to possess him, and the truly weird supernatural shenanigans surrounding said ghost just feel deeply, deeply out of place in this otherwise realistic novel. I like supernatural shenanigans a lot, in the right context, but this was absolutely not it. And while you can maybe try to chalk Jasper's hauntings up to psychosis instead of treating them as real, that fails to work, either, for a whole host of reasons. It also doesn't help that Jasper's story is clearly meant to tie in with a couple of Mitchell's other novels, which I have not yet read. (I have them on my ridiculously overfull TBR shelves, but I felt I ought to read this one first, since I got a free review copy and needed to, well, review it. Silly me, I didn't thank that would be a problem!) But while I probably would have gotten a bit more out of those story elements if I had read the earlier books, I very much doubt it would have helped all that much. And it's a bit sad, really, because Jasper is a good character and I can't help feeling he deserved a story I could actually believe in.
I also had problems with the ending, which I felt was abrupt, contrived, and unsatisfying, as well as some lesser issues, such as the way many of the celebrity cameos felt a little too awkwardly wink-wink to me.
And yet, despite all that, I can't help feeling this was a good book. It engaged me. I liked the characters, and found their world and their lives and their personalities interesting and worth spending time with. Mitchell's writing is often beautiful and insightful and emotionally resonant. But god damn, do I wish I could read the book it seems like it could have been, instead.
Rating: I'm giving this 4/5. Because it's a truly excellent novel burdened with some maddening flaws, which I guess knocks it down to just "good." And four stars works for "good." But I feel like there ought to be some kind of asterisk on that rating. show less
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
A quantum physicist passes the time on a long overnight flight calculating the odds that these particular three hundred sixty passengers would share it. She concludes they are long indeed. Yet at the end of the chapter centering on her, when she is coerced to return to a project she’d fled from, she realizes how the electrons, other subatomic matter, and the forces that hold them together are one.
That may be one of the pearls at the heart of this collection of interconnected stories. Each show more story focuses on one person, but characters from other stories pop up. Along with swans who turn into girls (and vice versa) and bats falling from the sky. And an approaching comet.
Whichever the main character, the stories are all narrated in the first person. I admired the way the author created a unique voice for each narrator.
The lives of these characters intersect across the globe, in Japan, Hong Kong, Petersburg, and others. It seemed a virtuoso performance until the author set part of one of the stories in Switzerland. In it, he refers to the mechanical figurines on the town clock in Zurich. The author may have been thinking of the Zytglogge in Bern. An earlier chapter had been set in Mongolia, where I’ve never been, and now I wondered how accurate that local color had been.
A petty point, you might say, and I’d grant that. It’s a nagging flaw in a book I was otherwise wowed by. It’s a virtuoso performance. The stories are cleverly plotted, with cross-references strewn like breadcrumbs on the path. The writing is crafted like lyrical poetry. All of this in a debut novel.
At the close of one episode, “Petersburg,” the narrator remarks: “None of this happened. None of this really happened.” My first reaction is that this was an obviously meta touch. After all, it’s a novel—of course, none of it happened (well, aside from the Tokyo subway sarin attack and a few other unpleasant events). Only later did I tie this to what I’ve previously concluded was that character’s massive ability to self-delude.
Another of the pearls in the book is that our technology has advanced beyond our ability to control it. The person who voices this insight is the quantum physicist, my favorite among the many characters. She is confident, though, that she has found a way to overcome that problem, somewhat like the imperatives Asimov formulated for robots. But, then, in the breathless crescendo that is the penultimate chapter, this turns out to have been an illusory hope.
This is David Mitchell’s debut novel, and it’s a masterpiece. I’m looking forward to reading more of his books. show less
That may be one of the pearls at the heart of this collection of interconnected stories. Each show more story focuses on one person, but characters from other stories pop up. Along with swans who turn into girls (and vice versa) and bats falling from the sky. And an approaching comet.
Whichever the main character, the stories are all narrated in the first person. I admired the way the author created a unique voice for each narrator.
The lives of these characters intersect across the globe, in Japan, Hong Kong, Petersburg, and others. It seemed a virtuoso performance until the author set part of one of the stories in Switzerland. In it, he refers to the mechanical figurines on the town clock in Zurich. The author may have been thinking of the Zytglogge in Bern. An earlier chapter had been set in Mongolia, where I’ve never been, and now I wondered how accurate that local color had been.
A petty point, you might say, and I’d grant that. It’s a nagging flaw in a book I was otherwise wowed by. It’s a virtuoso performance. The stories are cleverly plotted, with cross-references strewn like breadcrumbs on the path. The writing is crafted like lyrical poetry. All of this in a debut novel.
At the close of one episode, “Petersburg,” the narrator remarks: “None of this happened. None of this really happened.” My first reaction is that this was an obviously meta touch. After all, it’s a novel—of course, none of it happened (well, aside from the Tokyo subway sarin attack and a few other unpleasant events). Only later did I tie this to what I’ve previously concluded was that character’s massive ability to self-delude.
Another of the pearls in the book is that our technology has advanced beyond our ability to control it. The person who voices this insight is the quantum physicist, my favorite among the many characters. She is confident, though, that she has found a way to overcome that problem, somewhat like the imperatives Asimov formulated for robots. But, then, in the breathless crescendo that is the penultimate chapter, this turns out to have been an illusory hope.
This is David Mitchell’s debut novel, and it’s a masterpiece. I’m looking forward to reading more of his books. show less
Read the book – don’t see the movie. For those of you who saw The Wachowski’s film treatment of David Mitchell’s novel [Cloud Atlas], there is so much more waiting for you in its pages. Don’t misunderstand, the film was a grand gesture, taking a book that many people deemed unfilmable and giving it a visual treatment. It was epic, visually stunning, and challenging. But in the attempt to give Mitchell’s voice to the film, the Wachowski’s opted to slide in and out of the six show more nested stories rather than tell them in the order that Mitchell does. The result is herky-jerky at best, making it difficult to sink into any of the characters or stories, like the reader does
For the uninitiated, Mitchell’s novel offers six stories set in wildly different times and locales. Each account is told in a distinct voice that is consistent with the time and place of the story. He links each of the stories through some slight connection: a character that recurs or a manuscript from one character finds its way into the hands of a character from a different story. But the connections are deeper for Mitchell than these surface links. One person from each story bears an unusual birthmark in the shape of a comet. The suggestion is that these are reincarnated souls, living successive lives in different times, vaguely aware of their previous lives and connected to them in some way. Each of their stories is interrupted mid-stream for another, in one case, in the middle of a sentence.
Mitchell starts with Adam Ewing, a San Francisan sailing the Pacific in the mid-nineteenth century, who is the unwitting victim of a deceitful doctor. The doctor falsely diagnoses Ewing with a parasite so that he can slowly poison the man and rob him. Ewing journals the journey. Robert Frobisher, a young, down-on-his-luck musician and composer from the 1930’s, interrupts Ewing’s account. Frobisher seeks out a reclusive master composer and auditions as his amanuensis. He soon learns that their partnership is not at all equal, and begins composing his own work alone, the Clous Atlas Sextet. During his time in the composer’s home, Frobisher finds Ewing’s journal and reads it. He then sends his sextet, along with Ewing’s journal, to his friend, Sixsmith, to whom Frobisher’s story is told in the form of letters. Sixsmith reappears in the next story, a noirish mystery featuring Luisa Rey, a slightly radical journalist for a kiss-and-tell rag. In 1975, Rey meets Sixsmith, now an engineer, in an elevator, and he sets her onto a conspiracy surrounding the opening of a nuclear reactor. After Sixsmith is murdered, Rey collects Frobisher’s letters to him from Sixsmith’s motel room, and reads them, learning that she and Frobisher share the comet-like birthmark. Rey’s story makes its way to Timothy Cavendish, a publisher of no particular account. Cavendish reads Rey’s story as a submission for publication while he is on the run from the hoodlum brothers of another seedy author who believes that Cavendish owes him money. Mistakenly imprisoned in a Nurse Ratched-run nursing home, Cavendish must lead his cohorts on a daring and comical escape, one that he decides to chronicle in his own memoir. Somni-451, a fabricated clone in a dystopian world, recounts watching a film version of Cavendish’s story, while she is interrogated. Somni reveals her awakening at the hands of rebels who seek to abolish a corporate government that has enslaved the world in a forced consumer state. Further into the future, Zachary describes the world that resulted from Somni’s revolution, a world stripped of most civilization. Somni’s interrogation features prominently in Zachary’s world, as she has become a deity of sorts, and her interrogation a morality tale, encapsulating the principles of righteousness.
Zachary’s tale is the only one that isn’t interrupted, serving as a fulcrum to push the narrative back through the others, back to the beginning. In the conclusion of Ewing’s journal, as he describes his attacker’s confession, Mitchell’s theme is the most clear. The doctor tells Ewing, “The weak are meat, the strong do eat.” The victimization of each of the comet-marked souls in Mithchell’s novel is never more clear than with Ewing. It is a much more direct and intimate feast for the doctor. The constant predation of the human world was Mitchell’s point all along. While each of these characters are fed upon though, they also survive, each chipping away at the chains and offering the next incarnation a chance at survival.
Bottom Line: A story that transcends time and place, yet is firmly rooted in several times and places.
5 bones!!!!!
A favorite for the year. show less
For the uninitiated, Mitchell’s novel offers six stories set in wildly different times and locales. Each account is told in a distinct voice that is consistent with the time and place of the story. He links each of the stories through some slight connection: a character that recurs or a manuscript from one character finds its way into the hands of a character from a different story. But the connections are deeper for Mitchell than these surface links. One person from each story bears an unusual birthmark in the shape of a comet. The suggestion is that these are reincarnated souls, living successive lives in different times, vaguely aware of their previous lives and connected to them in some way. Each of their stories is interrupted mid-stream for another, in one case, in the middle of a sentence.
Mitchell starts with Adam Ewing, a San Francisan sailing the Pacific in the mid-nineteenth century, who is the unwitting victim of a deceitful doctor. The doctor falsely diagnoses Ewing with a parasite so that he can slowly poison the man and rob him. Ewing journals the journey. Robert Frobisher, a young, down-on-his-luck musician and composer from the 1930’s, interrupts Ewing’s account. Frobisher seeks out a reclusive master composer and auditions as his amanuensis. He soon learns that their partnership is not at all equal, and begins composing his own work alone, the Clous Atlas Sextet. During his time in the composer’s home, Frobisher finds Ewing’s journal and reads it. He then sends his sextet, along with Ewing’s journal, to his friend, Sixsmith, to whom Frobisher’s story is told in the form of letters. Sixsmith reappears in the next story, a noirish mystery featuring Luisa Rey, a slightly radical journalist for a kiss-and-tell rag. In 1975, Rey meets Sixsmith, now an engineer, in an elevator, and he sets her onto a conspiracy surrounding the opening of a nuclear reactor. After Sixsmith is murdered, Rey collects Frobisher’s letters to him from Sixsmith’s motel room, and reads them, learning that she and Frobisher share the comet-like birthmark. Rey’s story makes its way to Timothy Cavendish, a publisher of no particular account. Cavendish reads Rey’s story as a submission for publication while he is on the run from the hoodlum brothers of another seedy author who believes that Cavendish owes him money. Mistakenly imprisoned in a Nurse Ratched-run nursing home, Cavendish must lead his cohorts on a daring and comical escape, one that he decides to chronicle in his own memoir. Somni-451, a fabricated clone in a dystopian world, recounts watching a film version of Cavendish’s story, while she is interrogated. Somni reveals her awakening at the hands of rebels who seek to abolish a corporate government that has enslaved the world in a forced consumer state. Further into the future, Zachary describes the world that resulted from Somni’s revolution, a world stripped of most civilization. Somni’s interrogation features prominently in Zachary’s world, as she has become a deity of sorts, and her interrogation a morality tale, encapsulating the principles of righteousness.
Zachary’s tale is the only one that isn’t interrupted, serving as a fulcrum to push the narrative back through the others, back to the beginning. In the conclusion of Ewing’s journal, as he describes his attacker’s confession, Mitchell’s theme is the most clear. The doctor tells Ewing, “The weak are meat, the strong do eat.” The victimization of each of the comet-marked souls in Mithchell’s novel is never more clear than with Ewing. It is a much more direct and intimate feast for the doctor. The constant predation of the human world was Mitchell’s point all along. While each of these characters are fed upon though, they also survive, each chipping away at the chains and offering the next incarnation a chance at survival.
Bottom Line: A story that transcends time and place, yet is firmly rooted in several times and places.
5 bones!!!!!
A favorite for the year. show less
Ah yes, David Mitchell! There’s just something about the way he tells a story—the wit, the language, the references, the literary plots about fun things, the celebration of mundanity and life—that I just like, and this book got me right from the start. It’s full of 1960s vigor and music and nostalgia, without ever forgetting the darker sides of the era, and the characters and their rise to fame are great to read about.
Is it the best novel Mitchell’s ever written? Probably not. But show more I had the best time reading it, and it’s certainly not the worst. (I don’t know which that is though.)
This is an underdog story. The four main characters, and a few of the supporting cast, are down on their luck, striving for greatness, and playing bum gigs in third-rate pubs to pay (or not pay) the bills when we meet them, and you can’t help cheering as the band forms and starts to climb the charts. There’s more to the story than that, since each character has their own stuff going on and Mitchell slips in his usual science fictional psychology stuff for a subplot, but on the whole it’s a tried-and-true story.
And I’m okay with that, because this is as much about Mitchell portraying the rock scene of the era, with a side of revolution and rebellion and hope for the future, as it is about following the band and its members. It honestly feels at times like Mitchell was there, he’s able to write the vibe that well, but I don’t know how much of that’s from research, of which there was clearly a lot, and how much is from a desire to make the 1960s feel like the 1960s. (There are, among other things, musician cameos and some very ‘60s set pieces.) (Is he lampshading the more ‘60s elements? Probably.) It certainly helps that he’s seriously great at descriptions and metaphors and twisting language into interesting mental shapes.
Mitchell’s style also made the characters feel real, main characters, supporting characters, and walk-on parts. (Maybe a little larger than life at times, but still.) He does this thing with lists, and is really good at small moments and close-POV, and I wound up about as invested in their lives as if I’d been following them as a fan. Elf resonated. Dean is living the rocker dream. Griff Is A Drummer. Jasper was just … interesting and I liked how the SF-y elements interacted with his life. Every time I hit a new chapter, I got excited to be visiting whichever POV it had.
The only thing I didn’t really care for here was how much the SF stuff took over Jasper’s story at points, because it didn’t quite fit with the rock’n’roll parts of the story or, really, the themes of the book and I got impatient at a few points to get back to the “actual” story. There are a lot of references to other books where Mitchell’s dropped in the same elements—notably The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet—and those were fun call-backs and easter eggs, but parts of Jasper’s story felt more like Mitchell was setting up something for another book rather than really integrating anything here.
But then again, as much as I love what Mitchell does, I’ve yet to read a novel by him that hasn’t had a “this doesn’t fit” moment or other oddness, so that’s just the way of things, I guess? I still had a blast reading this book and immersing myself in the ‘60s, and I want to listen to Utopia Avenue’s albums so badly.
Definitely rec this to Mitchell fans, people who want an entertaining literary novel, or as I think I’ve said elsewhere, people who liked Daisy Jones and the Six but wanted more of a sense of the era.
To bear in mind: Sex, drugs, rock’n’roll, sexual harassment, external homophobia, internalised homophobia, one scene with an anti-Semite, mental illness, mental institutions, suicidal ideation, terrible boyfriends
8/10 show less
Is it the best novel Mitchell’s ever written? Probably not. But show more I had the best time reading it, and it’s certainly not the worst. (I don’t know which that is though.)
This is an underdog story. The four main characters, and a few of the supporting cast, are down on their luck, striving for greatness, and playing bum gigs in third-rate pubs to pay (or not pay) the bills when we meet them, and you can’t help cheering as the band forms and starts to climb the charts. There’s more to the story than that, since each character has their own stuff going on and Mitchell slips in his usual science fictional psychology stuff for a subplot, but on the whole it’s a tried-and-true story.
And I’m okay with that, because this is as much about Mitchell portraying the rock scene of the era, with a side of revolution and rebellion and hope for the future, as it is about following the band and its members. It honestly feels at times like Mitchell was there, he’s able to write the vibe that well, but I don’t know how much of that’s from research, of which there was clearly a lot, and how much is from a desire to make the 1960s feel like the 1960s. (There are, among other things, musician cameos and some very ‘60s set pieces.) (Is he lampshading the more ‘60s elements? Probably.) It certainly helps that he’s seriously great at descriptions and metaphors and twisting language into interesting mental shapes.
Mitchell’s style also made the characters feel real, main characters, supporting characters, and walk-on parts. (Maybe a little larger than life at times, but still.) He does this thing with lists, and is really good at small moments and close-POV, and I wound up about as invested in their lives as if I’d been following them as a fan. Elf resonated. Dean is living the rocker dream. Griff Is A Drummer. Jasper was just … interesting and I liked how the SF-y elements interacted with his life. Every time I hit a new chapter, I got excited to be visiting whichever POV it had.
The only thing I didn’t really care for here was how much the SF stuff took over Jasper’s story at points, because it didn’t quite fit with the rock’n’roll parts of the story or, really, the themes of the book and I got impatient at a few points to get back to the “actual” story. There are a lot of references to other books where Mitchell’s dropped in the same elements—notably The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet—and those were fun call-backs and easter eggs, but parts of Jasper’s story felt more like Mitchell was setting up something for another book rather than really integrating anything here.
But then again, as much as I love what Mitchell does, I’ve yet to read a novel by him that hasn’t had a “this doesn’t fit” moment or other oddness, so that’s just the way of things, I guess? I still had a blast reading this book and immersing myself in the ‘60s, and I want to listen to Utopia Avenue’s albums so badly.
Definitely rec this to Mitchell fans, people who want an entertaining literary novel, or as I think I’ve said elsewhere, people who liked Daisy Jones and the Six but wanted more of a sense of the era.
To bear in mind: Sex, drugs, rock’n’roll, sexual harassment, external homophobia, internalised homophobia, one scene with an anti-Semite, mental illness, mental institutions, suicidal ideation, terrible boyfriends
8/10 show less
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