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pomvader's review against another edition
5.0
Not as good as The Bone Clocks, but it's still wonderful. I can't get enough of David Mitchell's writing. I hope there's more in the works. Until then, I might just go all the way back to Ghostwritten and start over.
matthewcpeck's review against another edition
4.0
One of the most enjoyable and satisfying novels I've read in many moons. Also, for David Mitchell, a step back in the right direction after "The Bone Clocks" and "Slade House". The fantastical entities from those works do make an appearance in "Utopia Avenue", but it doesn't tarnish the newer book's own lovingly created universe: the sweet spot of psychedelic rock in 1967/68. In fact, the wilder elements fit right in. Classic rock and the counterculture from which it sprang has been exhaustively and repetitively dramatized. But Mitchell somehow to skirt cliches, and he writes about the creation and performance of music with enviable skill. You can almost *hear* the titular English band, a quartet comprising three very different songwriters and a drummer, as you read the chapters, which are structured as tracks on the band's three albums. Along the group's bumpy journey from Soho basement clubs to San Francisco festivals, they mingle with dozens of real-life musical legends (all now deceased, notably) including David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, Janis Joplin, and Jerry Garcia. This can be a bit distracting, like a Simpsons episode full of contrived celebrity cameos - but I grant that it was probably ordinary for famous musicians to be constantly bumping into one another around this time. The easter-egg music references and cameos are fun, but it's Mitchell's characters and storytelling that keep the book's engine running. For the Mitchell-heads out there, this is actually closest to "Black Swan Green", but with an length and some metaphysical weirdness. A real treat for me, and for lovers of 60s culture.
cmarcatili's review against another edition
2.0
Remember the 2001 film, Rat Race, in which a seemingly random assortment of mid-to-top tier actors were thrown into an otherwise unremarkable comedy? Not really? Well the lesson was this: jamming in as many big names as you can get doesn't make for a great film.
The same lesson applies to novels, and historic fiction novels in particular.
Firstly, I should say that I love David Mitchell's books. I've read them all, some of them a few times over, and Cloud Atlas remains in my all-time top five. That I didn't like Utopia Avenue doesn't change my overall love of Mitchell's work. Every band has a few bad albums.
Utopia Avenue is the story of a band of four mismatched musical talents in the late 1960s London music scene. Manager Levon curates the band, pulling together the folk singer/song writer Elf Holloway, upstart rock bassist Dean Moss, psychedelic guitar virtuoso Jasper de Zoet, and jazz drummer 'Griff' Griffen. With three song writers in the band, their first album Paradise is the Road to Paradise is a mid-grade hit, and their second album shoots them across the pond to make it pretty big in the USA.
Readers of Mitchells other books will recognise the De Zoet name. His madness links him to Mitchell's multi-verse. So, too, does Elf's interactions with one of Cloud Atlas's characters, a certain young reporter for Spyglass Magazine. But unlike many of Mitchell's other novels, there's not much experimentation here with style, genre, perspective or even tone (except maybe for a few of de Zoet's scenes, which might come as a surprise if this is your first Mitchell book).
Along the way, the band encounters a range of life's ups and downs, and these dramas imbue their music with all the varieties of life. Each chapter is the title of one of their songs, and the book plays out like an episodic insight into the inspirations behind each song, while also revealing a larger story of the band's quick rise and fall across a few heady months of gigs, parties, fame, sex and drugs.
I suppose it should be no controversy, then, that London, New York, LA and San Fransisco are all bursting at the seams with big names. A chapter hardly passes where someone in the band doesn't bump into David Bowie, John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Leonard Cohen, Frank Zappa, Joni Mitchell, Mama Cass, or Brian Jones. You name it, they're either in the book, alluded to obliquely, or there's a scene where one of their albums is mentioned. And fair enough, right? The point is the band is mixing it with all the big names.
Except, most of the time these big names are thrown into the plot for no particular reason. Reading this book, I got sick of the number of times one of the characters would say some variation on: 'Wow! You're [insert musician here].' And the musician would reply with something like 'Yeah. And I think Utopia Avenue is great!'
I once heard advice for people planning to write historical fiction: don't throw in pointless cameos with well-known people from history. It's cliche and lazy. Unless the story is about that person, or they serve the story in some important way, leave them out. Utopia Avenue is the opposite of that advice. Like, early in the book someone bumps into Bowie in a stairway and has a conversation with him that doesn't add anything to the novel. They bump into him again, later, and the same thing happens. Neither interaction offers anything to the novel. This is true of nearly all the interactions with famous people throughout the plot. And worse, they're rarely portrayed with anything approaching complexity or offering any interesting insight to them as people. They appear on set, say a few words, and disappear. Conversations taking place with Syd Barrett could be happening with Jimi Hendrix and you wouldn't notice the difference. The famous musicians in the novel are essentially set pieces, and a lot of the book reads like wish-fulfilment.
I could have looked past that, and just embraced it for what it was. But the real problem with Utopia Avenue, for me at least, was that it felt incredibly rushed, which is a remarkable feat given it runs at almost 600 pages.
Rushed because there are long passages that contribute almost nothing to the plot, except to name-drop half a dozen well-known musicians. Rushed because naming songs playing in the background is a technique often used instead of actually evoking a scene or emotion. Rushed because there are so many moments that are supposed to have high impact and they often occur without preamble (e.g. a live-on-TV punch-up). So many of these moments just rush by, a catalogue of misfortunes, all of them feeling jammed in for the sake of it without much emotional weight. Rushed, too, because my edition was full of editing issues, like typos, confused over-reliance on italics, and the exact same sentence copied and pasted from one paragraph to another on the next page (I saw this at least twice, in one example Dean goes out to the back patio and then, a page later, Dean goes out to the back patio).
In other words, I think Utopia Avenue could have been a good book if Mitchell had been given about another year to work on it. A few more editing rounds, cutting a good 200 pages or so, focusing on the heart of the narrative rather than all the unneeded cameos, and a much more thorough edit would have really helped this book shine. It sits on my shelf along with every other Mitchell book, but it won't be one I revisit any time soon.
The same lesson applies to novels, and historic fiction novels in particular.
Firstly, I should say that I love David Mitchell's books. I've read them all, some of them a few times over, and Cloud Atlas remains in my all-time top five. That I didn't like Utopia Avenue doesn't change my overall love of Mitchell's work. Every band has a few bad albums.
Utopia Avenue is the story of a band of four mismatched musical talents in the late 1960s London music scene. Manager Levon curates the band, pulling together the folk singer/song writer Elf Holloway, upstart rock bassist Dean Moss, psychedelic guitar virtuoso Jasper de Zoet, and jazz drummer 'Griff' Griffen. With three song writers in the band, their first album Paradise is the Road to Paradise is a mid-grade hit, and their second album shoots them across the pond to make it pretty big in the USA.
Readers of Mitchells other books will recognise the De Zoet name. His madness links him to Mitchell's multi-verse. So, too, does Elf's interactions with one of Cloud Atlas's characters, a certain young reporter for Spyglass Magazine. But unlike many of Mitchell's other novels, there's not much experimentation here with style, genre, perspective or even tone (except maybe for a few of de Zoet's scenes, which might come as a surprise if this is your first Mitchell book).
Along the way, the band encounters a range of life's ups and downs, and these dramas imbue their music with all the varieties of life. Each chapter is the title of one of their songs, and the book plays out like an episodic insight into the inspirations behind each song, while also revealing a larger story of the band's quick rise and fall across a few heady months of gigs, parties, fame, sex and drugs.
I suppose it should be no controversy, then, that London, New York, LA and San Fransisco are all bursting at the seams with big names. A chapter hardly passes where someone in the band doesn't bump into David Bowie, John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Leonard Cohen, Frank Zappa, Joni Mitchell, Mama Cass, or Brian Jones. You name it, they're either in the book, alluded to obliquely, or there's a scene where one of their albums is mentioned. And fair enough, right? The point is the band is mixing it with all the big names.
Except, most of the time these big names are thrown into the plot for no particular reason. Reading this book, I got sick of the number of times one of the characters would say some variation on: 'Wow! You're [insert musician here].' And the musician would reply with something like 'Yeah. And I think Utopia Avenue is great!'
I once heard advice for people planning to write historical fiction: don't throw in pointless cameos with well-known people from history. It's cliche and lazy. Unless the story is about that person, or they serve the story in some important way, leave them out. Utopia Avenue is the opposite of that advice. Like, early in the book someone bumps into Bowie in a stairway and has a conversation with him that doesn't add anything to the novel. They bump into him again, later, and the same thing happens. Neither interaction offers anything to the novel. This is true of nearly all the interactions with famous people throughout the plot. And worse, they're rarely portrayed with anything approaching complexity or offering any interesting insight to them as people. They appear on set, say a few words, and disappear. Conversations taking place with Syd Barrett could be happening with Jimi Hendrix and you wouldn't notice the difference. The famous musicians in the novel are essentially set pieces, and a lot of the book reads like wish-fulfilment.
I could have looked past that, and just embraced it for what it was. But the real problem with Utopia Avenue, for me at least, was that it felt incredibly rushed, which is a remarkable feat given it runs at almost 600 pages.
Rushed because there are long passages that contribute almost nothing to the plot, except to name-drop half a dozen well-known musicians. Rushed because naming songs playing in the background is a technique often used instead of actually evoking a scene or emotion. Rushed because there are so many moments that are supposed to have high impact and they often occur without preamble (e.g. a live-on-TV punch-up). So many of these moments just rush by, a catalogue of misfortunes, all of them feeling jammed in for the sake of it without much emotional weight. Rushed, too, because my edition was full of editing issues, like typos, confused over-reliance on italics, and the exact same sentence copied and pasted from one paragraph to another on the next page (I saw this at least twice, in one example Dean goes out to the back patio and then, a page later, Dean goes out to the back patio).
In other words, I think Utopia Avenue could have been a good book if Mitchell had been given about another year to work on it. A few more editing rounds, cutting a good 200 pages or so, focusing on the heart of the narrative rather than all the unneeded cameos, and a much more thorough edit would have really helped this book shine. It sits on my shelf along with every other Mitchell book, but it won't be one I revisit any time soon.
annikea's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
dukeofmars's review against another edition
4.0
Fookin' A, but do I want to listen to this band. In his newest novel, Mitchell assembles what I have to assume is his dream musical group (and not far off from mine), in a raucous anti-establishment hard blues rock bassist, a folk singer songwriter keyboardist, a psychedelic shred master guitarist, and a genius jazz session drummer. Their music is everything good about music from the late 60s. As someone who wasn't alive to experience it firsthand, but always appreciated the era's sound, Utopia Avenue gave me an intoxicating world to escape into.
And after marking down every song mentioned in the book, a pretty wicked 9+ hour playlist on Spotify.
The book starts slow, without much conflict to create interest, and there are portions further in where it felt like I was reading the sequel to a different book, without knowing I was supposed to read that book first (People who read Mitchell's other work, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, as I have not, will probably be fine).
But overall, Mitchell delivers the emotional punches in the gut that I didn't know I yearned for. His characters grew on me, hard, and his world -- equal parts magical and unfair -- seduced me wholecloth. Now someone record their albums, man.
And after marking down every song mentioned in the book, a pretty wicked 9+ hour playlist on Spotify.
The book starts slow, without much conflict to create interest, and there are portions further in where it felt like I was reading the sequel to a different book, without knowing I was supposed to read that book first (People who read Mitchell's other work, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, as I have not, will probably be fine).
But overall, Mitchell delivers the emotional punches in the gut that I didn't know I yearned for. His characters grew on me, hard, and his world -- equal parts magical and unfair -- seduced me wholecloth. Now someone record their albums, man.
phwoooarker's review against another edition
5.0
I absolutely love this book. I've read three other David Mitchell books and loved them as well, but between the pandemic and pregnancy, this one passed me by. I was visiting my parents and need a book so grabbed this off a shelf and from the first page could not put it down. I devoured it in a week and by the end was dreaming about it. I loved the setting (1960s Soho would surely be the best place to time travel to), the characters, the Mitchell metaverse element, and the celebrity cameos. As far as I'm concerned this is Mitchell's best book and I'm sure I'll read it again.
juno_enb's review against another edition
adventurous
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
4.25
soconnell09's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
3.5
Story of a band written from the perspective of the four members. Parts were beautiful, parts were weird and didn't belong. Overall too long.
lacytelles's review against another edition
5.0
How I loved this book. Yes, I love David Mitchell. But this fact has nothing to do with how much I loved this story. I was worried, at first, that it was going to be super boy heavy and super heteronormative, but fortunately it is saved by a wonderfully layered girl member of the band. It basically follows the creation and growth of a band in 1960's London. The settings and the plot lines are awesome, and the characters suck you in.
It is long, but so good. Recommend.
It is long, but so good. Recommend.
aisclaradm's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
lighthearted
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
A great book about music, drugs, love, grief, but mainly about youth, and about how difficult it can be to find yourself and your identity as a young person. It was so immersive and engaging, and even though at times it felt fan-fictionesque because of interactions with real artists of the time, this added a lot to a nostalgic feel for a decade I haven’t even experienced. Some plot lines were brilliant and completely unexpected, such as the discovery that Jasper’s schizophrenia was actually due to a very real supernatural entity lodged in his mind, and I really really loved these arcs, though I wish they had had more of a central role in the story. The ending was a bit of a gut-punch, and Dean’s death, right after having had his numerous epiphanies about life, disappointed me hugely, but I suppose it had the intended effect.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, Sexism, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Violence, Grief, Car accident, Suicide attempt, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, Alcohol, and Sexual harassment
Moderate: Addiction, Cursing, Gun violence, Homophobia, Sexual content, Violence, Police brutality, Lesbophobia, Toxic friendship, and Classism
Minor: Confinement, Genocide, and War