She soon becomes Utopia Avenue’s leader and steers its musical direction. It’s Levon who brings together Dean and sad-souled Elf Holloway, a refugee of the folk circuit and a keyboard player and lead singer dealing both with period-typical sexism and a break-up with her ex-bandmate-and-romantic-partner. It’s 1966 and the book’s main narrator, Dean Moss, is a sleep-around bassist obsessed with the blues whose day gig at a coffee shop leads to him meeting Levon Frankland, a man looking to put together a band. The members of Utopia Avenue could not be more different from one another. The rest is the story – detailing the struggles and joys of the titular psych-rock band that David Mitchell’s latest novel concerns itself with – is entirely itself, kitchen-sink real and fanciful in alternating measures. “Those whose musical tastes end in the early 1970s-and literary tastes are up to the minute-will especially enjoy Mitchell’s yarn.Utopia Avenue is one part Backbeat, two more of the bracing whimsical wit of A Hard Day’s Night, several parts Head-like support of social upheaval and psychedelics, with maybe a skosh of That Thing You Do! thrown in. This is Mitchell at his best.” - Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Mitchell unspools at least a dozen original song lyrics and descriptions of performances that are just as fiery and infectious as his narratives. “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.
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