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A review by zenarcade
Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell
3.0
While overall I did enjoy reading this book, I didn't love it as much as I was expecting to. I think probably my expectations were too high- David Mitchell is one of my favourite writers, and I love 60s psychedelic rock, so I figured this would be right up my alley. But it didn't quite grab me in the way that his other novels have. My issues:
1) I'm not how well all the celebrity cameos/namedropping worked. To a certain extent, it was probably necessary; it would be hard to write about the London music scene in the 60s without including some of these name, but it still kind of took me out of the story whenever it happened. Maybe I'm just weird about reading fictionalized depictions of real people, but it felt a little self-indulgent to me at points.
2) I don't think the characters were particularly strong. One of my favourite things about David Mitchell's books is that I've always felt like he was especially talented at writing different character voices, but I wasn't feeling that as strongly in Utopia Avenue. Jasper was probably the most interesting of the main cast, but a lot of the other major characters (Dean, Griff) could've been more compelling.
There definitely were things I liked about the book though! I spent this whole review criticizing it, but I did enjoy the novel, it just wasn't quite what I was hoping it would be.
1) I'm not how well all the celebrity cameos/namedropping worked. To a certain extent, it was probably necessary; it would be hard to write about the London music scene in the 60s without including some of these name, but it still kind of took me out of the story whenever it happened. Maybe I'm just weird about reading fictionalized depictions of real people, but it felt a little self-indulgent to me at points.
2) I don't think the characters were particularly strong. One of my favourite things about David Mitchell's books is that I've always felt like he was especially talented at writing different character voices, but I wasn't feeling that as strongly in Utopia Avenue. Jasper was probably the most interesting of the main cast, but a lot of the other major characters (Dean, Griff) could've been more compelling.
Spoiler
3) While all of his novels are somewhat interconnected, I wished the references in this book were a bit more subtle- it was a bit jarring with the rest of the novel to have what felt like part of The Bone Clocks shoehorned into the plot midway through.There definitely were things I liked about the book though! I spent this whole review criticizing it, but I did enjoy the novel, it just wasn't quite what I was hoping it would be.