“Mitchell continues to use the rhythms of surface reality to dig much deeper, but without ever losing the beat.” - Booklist (starred review) “ Utopia Avenue’s got all the sex, drugs, and broken dreams you want in a rock novel, plus guest appearances by Jagger, Jerry, Janis, and Jim (Morrison).” - The Philadelphia Inquirer “The British pop-folk-rock band Utopia Avenue this novel focuses on seems so true to life, at least one reviewer (who shall not be named) may have Googled them just to confirm that they were a figment of the author’s imagination.” -AARP “For his first novel in five years, the author explores the universal language of music. A conventional story of a band’s rise turns into a book on another plane entirely.” - The New Yorker “Mitchell, whose novels range through different modes and genres with extraordinary facility, has a lucid, kinetic style at all times, but he is never more impressive than when writing in close third person about characters in altered mental states-captivity, physical pain, madness. We’ll get back to the garden someday.” - Los Angeles Times “In 2020, there is something utopian about the idea of people gathering together to make and record and play music, to create a scenius together. Mitchell’s obsessions–beyond the fictional meta-universe he has created–are with human voyages of self-actualization the process of figuring out who we are, and how we connect, in the brief time we have.” - Time Beneath the layers of references and unconventional structures lie lucid narratives. His sentences can be lyrical, but his prose is propulsive. His eight novels are experimental but approachable. “’s work has been compared to that of Haruki Murakami, Thomas Pynchon and Anthony Burgess. Can we really change the world, or does the world change us? Emerging from London’s psychedelic scene in 1967, and fronted by folk singer Elf Holloway, blues bassist Dean Moss and guitar virtuoso Jasper de Zoet, Utopia Avenue embarked on a meteoric journey from the seedy clubs of Soho, a TV debut on Top of the Pops, the cusp of chart success, glory in Amsterdam, prison in Rome, and a fateful American sojourn in the Chelsea Hotel, Laurel Canyon, and San Francisco during the autumn of ’68.ĭavid Mitchell’s kaleidoscopic novel tells the unexpurgated story of Utopia Avenue’s turbulent life and times of fame’s Faustian pact and stardom’s wobbly ladder of the families we choose and the ones we don’t of voices in the head, and the truths and lies they whisper of music, madness, and idealism. Utopia Avenue is the strangest British band you’ve never heard of. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post Making your way through this novel feels like riding a high-end convertible down Hollywood Boulevard.”- Slate Mitchell’s prose is suppler and richer than ever. “Mitchell’s rich imaginative stews bubble with history and drama, and this time the flavor is a blend of Carnaby Street and Chateau Marmont.”- The Washington Post.New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice The long-awaited new novel from the bestselling, prize-winning author of Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks.But, at its best, Utopia Avenue is a reminder of how exciting, how deliriously wild it must have been. The dismissive ‘OK, Boomer’ meme suggests younger generations are rolling their eyes at 1960s clichés-at that decade’s self-promoting, self-deluding schtick. Mitchell is too good a writer for there not to be passages of brilliance, but the overall effect is wearying-like some of those ‘raga rock’ albums recorded by pop stars who’d grown a beard for the first time, smelt some patchouli and listened to Ravi Shankar. But, at just 30 pages (or so) shy of 600, this is a self-indulgent, overly schematic, frequently tedious and self-congratulatory book. The novel also takes a fantastic detour-a fittingly psychedelic trip. Mitchell structures the novel like the band’s oeuvre, with each of the six parts serving as one side of an album (vinyl, obviously) and each chapter as a song title. Utopia Avenue tells the story of the rise of a fictional, eponymous British band-the action largely taking place between 19-with seemingly every pop legend of the era being wheeled on for a stilted cameo. Several of David Mitchell’s nine novels, including his latest Utopia Avenue, share a sibling relationship, but the pleasures of discerning patterns, connecting dots, recognizing references, in-jokes and plot devices are secondary to the thrills of reading each as a discrete work. (Left:) British author David Mitchell (right:) his latest book, Utopia Avenue (Photos courtesy Alamy and Hachette India)
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