Ralph Lister, David Mitchell: Utopia Avenue (AudiobookFormat, 2020, Random House Audio)
audio cd
Published July 14, 2020 by Random House Audio.
The long-awaited new novel from the bestselling, prize-winning author of Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks.
Utopia Avenue is the strangest British band you’ve never heard of. Emerging from London’s psychedelic scene in 1967 and fronted by folk singer Elf Holloway, guitar demigod Jasper de Zoet, and blues bassist Dean Moss, Utopia Avenue released only two LPs during its brief, blazing journey from the clubs of Soho and drafty ballrooms to Top of the Pops and the cusp of chart success, and on to glory in Amsterdam, prison in Rome, and a fateful American fortnight in the autumn of 1968.
David Mitchell’s captivating new novel tells the unexpurgated story of Utopia Avenue; of riots in the streets and revolutions in the head; of drugs, thugs, madness, love, sex, death, art; of the families we choose and the ones we don’t; of fame’s Faustian pact and stardom’s wobbly ladder. Can we …
The long-awaited new novel from the bestselling, prize-winning author of Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks.
Utopia Avenue is the strangest British band you’ve never heard of. Emerging from London’s psychedelic scene in 1967 and fronted by folk singer Elf Holloway, guitar demigod Jasper de Zoet, and blues bassist Dean Moss, Utopia Avenue released only two LPs during its brief, blazing journey from the clubs of Soho and drafty ballrooms to Top of the Pops and the cusp of chart success, and on to glory in Amsterdam, prison in Rome, and a fateful American fortnight in the autumn of 1968.
David Mitchell’s captivating new novel tells the unexpurgated story of Utopia Avenue; of riots in the streets and revolutions in the head; of drugs, thugs, madness, love, sex, death, art; of the families we choose and the ones we don’t; of fame’s Faustian pact and stardom’s wobbly ladder. Can we change the world in turbulent times, or does the world change us?
I loved reading about the rise of the band, how they all struggled but reached success in the end. What I found boring, though, are the endless details of the psychotic crises of one member. Way too many. Otherwise, it was a pleasant story.
Content warning bit spoilerish ...
Great fun. If I have a quibble, it's with Mitchell's divagations into the supernatural. It's a bit Marvel Universe, as is his recycling of characters between books as ancestors, descendants or immortals.
You can see the nature of the ending coming a mile away; he forces it on himself by having his characters mingle with the illustrious dead (or Dead).
Still, he's a lively, stylish writer who seems never to do the same thing twice.
