Utopia Avenue

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 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 show more 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

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 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 show more 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

London, 1967. I was there, and Mitchell brings this time and place vividly to life. A new band is formed. Bassist Dean Moss, a working class bloke from Gravesend, estranged from his father. A lady's man, reveling in the adulation of the chicks and groupies. Elf, from a stable, middle-class family, a folksinger/song writer with a small but loyal following. Just dumped by her Australian lover, Bruce, a jerk. Griff, the drummer comes from a jazz background, and in the background he mostly stays (often the fate of the drummer, I think), except for an interlude when circumstances cause him to question whether he will stay with the group as it takes off. And finally Jasper de Zoet, half Dutch, half English descendant of Jacob de Zoet, show more guitarist extraordinaire, another Clapton or Hendrix. Together, they become the band Utopia Avenue.

We follow the band's slow but steady rise to fame from playing the gritty pubs and halls of working-class England to Top of the Pops, to Amsterdam, and then onto a USA tour--from demo records to LPs topping the charts. Along the way famous people pass in and out of their lives--from Brian Jones to the Beatles and Stones to Leonard Cohen ("Lennie") to Janis Joplin to the Grateful Dead. It's a great ride, especially if you lived the times and the names and the music are familiar to you.

But even if you didn't, Mitchell tells a great story, with real and engaging characters. And, in particular, Mitchell is able to convey the creative processes his characters go through, so we are able to see and feel how songs are written, the spark that generates them, how the music is composed and the lyrics evolve. He also brings to life what the band members experience as they play their songs--how they "feel" the music and how they work together, and "rub off" on each other during performances and recording sessions. I particularly loved seeing how each of the band members composed songs to work through life issues, and seeing how even if the lyrics of a song might seem opaque or "druggie" if you didn't know what was going on behind the scenes, they were in fact wonderfully expressive.

There was one part of the book I didn't care for, although overall it didn't distract me too much. I haven't liked the "supernatural" elements of Mitchell's more recent fiction, i.e. The Bone Clocks. Here, Jasper is presented with a history of mental illness, having experienced a period of hospitalization for something resembling schizophrenia: he hears knocks. In actuality he has some sort of demon or malevolent spirit within him who has been dormant for centuries and who now wants out. This issue of Jasper being tormented, the effects on him and the band, just didn't have to involve the supernatural. Plain old schizophrenia would have been enough. But there's a whole chapter involving the horologists. I waded through, but didn't like it. But I didn't write the book, and overall I loved it.

4 1/2 stars show less

This review is for my recent and extremely tardy read of a LibraryThing Early Reviewer copy of Utopia Avenue. My explanation--though it's not an excuse--is that when the book first arrived, it was filched from my TBR pile by my Other Reader. It was the first David Mitchell she had read, and she liked it well enough to read six other novels by him right away. (I think she still hasn't read Cloud Atlas, although we saw the film together.)

Utopia Avenue is very much of a piece with Mitchell's universe of psychosotery and atemporals; it may even make connections of plot and character among earlier novels that had previously seemed to be detached from each other. I found it distinctive from my other Mitchell exposure (Cloud Atlas, The Bone show more Clocks, and Slade House) in having a smaller number of viewpoint characters and keeping them all contemporaneous, with the action--outside of some character background reflections and ten pages of epilogue--contained within a very limited timeframe of 1967-8.

The story centers in loose rotation on keyboardist/vocalist Elf Holloway, bassist/vocalist Dean Moss, and lead guitarist Jasper de Zoet, the three songwriter members of the English psychedelic rock-folk fusion band Utopia Avenue. Drummer Peter Griffin (oops! a search engine could have saved Mitchell from accidentally evoking a character from a long-running US cartoon!) got a writing credit on one track, and a corresponding viewpoint chapter--as did producer Levon Frankland. The entire book is structured around the band's three albums, and each chapter is named for a song, focuses on the member who wrote the song, and generally includes the moment of the song's inspiration. It is an impressive, tightly-built container. (I've seen the novel-as-album, chapters-as-tracks conceit done before, notably in Newton's Wake by Ken MacLeod, but not with this level of rigor.)

Within the container, there is a lot of rich character development and a healthy mix of tragedy and triumph. The supernatural psychosoteric business is pretty much invisible until halfway through the book, and becomes the dominant concern at about the 3/4 mark, which is a pattern I have seen in other work by Mitchell. I didn't find so much of the authorial and publishing reflexivity he has dropped into other books. Instead, the story is full of delightful and borderline-gratuitous cameos from music and counterculture celebrities of its era. The chapters are long, but they read quickly. There are plenty of sex and drugs, and they are treated with realistic ambivalence, rather than celebratory glee or cautionary horror.

The sort of brother-sister dynamic between Elf and Dean is quite sweet. After the first third of the book, the band of initial strangers--"curated" by the benevolent Levon--have become fast friends. By the novel's end, they feel like old friends of the reader. show less

David Mitchell somehow manages to combine masterful writing and great storytelling. Such a gift! Set primarily in London, and for a short period in New York City and Los Angeles, in the 1960s, this is the story of the life of a band, named "Utopia Avenue". The reader gets to know each band member's past and present via the trajectory of the band. Additionally, Mitchell is able to convey a solid picture of the music, politics, and cultural ambience of the era. I was fascinated by the functioning of the band throughout each member's life struggles, which include, drug use, mental illness, loss, sexuality, love, and above all, unconditional acceptance of one another over time. The band members become family. I also really enjoyed the show more namedropping as the band's popularity grows and their paths cross many icons of 60s music, in a way that feels completely possible. I have deep respect for David Mitchell's ability to tell a story which is fast-paced, seems totally plausible, and is populated with characters in whom the reader becomes deeply invested. Excellent book! show less

Can David Mitchell write a straight novel without mystic goodies? Utopia Avenue proves he can. Did he? I'm not telling!
What I will tell is that *UA* is a fine recreation of one aspect of the energy and creative seeking of new life that blossomed in the 1960s before Mitchell was even born. Set in '67 and '68, the book follows a unique four-person band who climb the charts in England, the Netherlands, and the USA.
I loved the main characters and wished only for more fookin' Griff, the drummer, who gave the group its rhythmic foundation but received less press than the other three composers and singers. I loved their personal stories and the play-by-play of their performances.
Last word goes to Jasper, the guitar god: "'Songs do not change show more the world....People do....Who or what influences the minds of the people who change the world? My answer is 'Ideas and feelings.' ... Songs. Songs, like dandelion seeds, following across space and time. Who knows where they'll land? Or what they'll bring? .... Feelings and ideas happen. Joy, solace, sympathy,. Assurance. Cathartic sorrow. The idea that life could be, should be, better than this. An invitation to slip into somebody else's skin for a little while. If a song plants an idea or a feeling in a mind, it has already changed the world.'"
Thank you, ER, for my copy of this book.
Keep singing! show less

An episodic novel that follows the 60's band Utopia Avenue from its creation to its potential demise. This is a hefty tome where Mitchell's habit of playing with reality and history gets a free leash and we, the readers, are gifted a tall tale about sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll. Although there are some irritants, like the resolution to Jasper's issue and the endless cameos of wise real-life celebrities, I am enamored of Mitchell's way of giving me characters that I truly care about, regardless if they're good, bad, or somewhere on a spectrum. This was one of those novels that I truly enjoyed sitting down to read and savor, not only for story or characters, but for its winding lusciousness.