Utopia Avenue

Starred review from April 1, 2020
Noted novelist Mitchell returns with a gritty, richly detailed fable from rock's golden age. There's no time-hopping, apart from a brief epilogue set in the present, or elegant experiments in genre-busting in Mitchell's latest novel, his first since Slade House (2015). Oh, there are a couple of winking references to Cloud Atlas (2004), which here takes the form of "overlapping solos for piano, clarinet, cello, flute, oboe and violin," and ace rock 'n' roll guitarist Jasper de Zoet is eventually revealed to descend from the eponymous hero of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (2010). Mostly, though, we're on realistic ground not seen since Black Swan Green (2006), and Mitchell digs deep in his saga of how two top-of-their-form players--de Zoet and ill-fated bassist Dean Moss--recruit an unlikely keyboardist and singer in the form of an ethereal folkie named Elf Holloway, who goes electric and joins them in a band that Jasper deems "Pavonine....Magpie-minded. Subterranean." The usual stuff of rock dramas--the ego clashes, the drugs, the hangers-on, and record-company parasites--is all there, but Mitchell, who wasn't born when Utopia Avenue's putative first album was released, knows exactly which real-life musicians to seed into the story: There's Gene Clark of The Byrds, for example, who admires a guitar figure of Jasper's ("So that's an F major seventh?...I call it 'F Demented' "). Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Syd Barrett, Jackson Browne, and Jerry Garcia turn up (as does, decades later, the brilliant band Talk Talk, acknowledging a debt to the Utopians). There's even a highly learned if tossed-aside reference to how the Stones' album Let It Bleed earned its name. Bone spurs and all, it's realistic indeed and just the thing for pop music fans of a bygone era that's still very much with us. Those whose musical tastes end in the early 1970s--and literary tastes are up to the minute--will especially enjoy Mitchell's yarn.

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Starred review from April 27, 2020
Mitchell’s magical, much anticipated latest (after Slade House) is a rollicking, rapturous tale of 1960s rock ’n’ roll. Utopia Avenue emerges from the London music scene as a ragtag band of four unforgettable characters, assembled by manager Levon Frankland as a “psychedelic-folk-rock” supergroup. There’s Jasper de Zoet, the dark and enigmatic lead guitarist; Elf Holloway, the ethereal songstress on keyboards; Griff Griffin, the gruff but lovable drummer; and Dean Moss, heartthrob bassist and lead singer. Dean, who escaped poverty and his abusive father, turns to music as his outlet of expression. De Zoet seeks a dangerous escape from his schizophrenia in a mystical “psychosurgery” treatment. Meanwhile, Griff, a “drummer-of-many-parts” according to the Village Voice (“Sounds as if my arms and legs unscrew,” Griff says), is the glue that keeps them together, and Elf circuitously navigates her sexuality and eventually finds a surprising new love. From dingy nightclubs to the Chelsea Hotel and room service in California, and cameos from Janis Joplin, Jerry Garcia, and members of the Rolling Stones, Mitchell follows the band’s sex- and drug-fueled rise to fame in 1968 and the group’s abrupt, heartbreaking end. Each chapter name is the title of a song and focuses on one of the main characters in the band, and Mitchell unspools at least a dozen original song lyrics and descriptions of performances that are just as fiery and infectious as his narratives. Mitchell makes the best use of his familiar elements, from recurring characters to an innovative narrative structure, delivering more fun, more mischief, and more heart than ever before. This is Mitchell at his best.

Starred review from June 1, 2020
Metafiction master Mitchell's readers can be excused if they greet a new novel by this unalloyed genius with both goose-pimply anticipation and trepidation over meeting the challenge. Not to worry. Utopia Avenue, while leaving behind neither the complexity nor the genre-bending pyrotechnics of The Bone Clocks (2014), is by far the most accessible of Mitchell's broad-canvas novels. This addictive Big Gulp of a narrative not only delivers a compelling and multitextured look at the 1960s, but it also could be the best novel about a rock band since Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010). Mitchell evokes the psychedelic age with a bravura mix of telling details and richly composed portraits of iconic figures (Janis Joplin, Jerry Garcia, and more). At the heart of the story, though, is the British band itself, Utopia Avenue: singer and guitarist Elf Holloway, guitar virtuoso Jasper de Zoet (descended from the titular character in Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (2010), bassist Dean Moss, and drummer Griff Griffin. Mitchell masterfully builds each of the four into top-of-the-marquee characters, subtly mixing coming-of-age portraits (including one particularly moving "long walk out of the closet") with revealing glimpses of inner lives?notably the demons inside Jasper's head, which must be exorcised by Marinus from The Bone Clocks. "Reality," Mitchell reminds us, is a "nuanced, paradoxical, shifting." So, too, is Utopia Avenue. It's a foot-tapping ode to rock music, but, like the band in full cry?smashing the end of a song "into drummed, pounded, twanged molecules"?Mitchell continues to use the rhythms of surface reality to dig much deeper, but without ever losing the beat.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2020

Mitchell (The Bone Clocks) spins readers through the Swingin' Sixties, charting the progress of British folk rock band Utopia Avenue. Thrown together by enterprising agent Levon Frankland, the band is comprised of jazz drummer Griff and tortured guitar genius Jasper, who were playing with a washed-up act; scrappy bassist Dean, who met Levon the day he was evicted and fired; and "girl singer"/keyboard player Elf, part of a duo until her boyfriend decamped to Paris. The band begin to see success but not without obstacles. They party with rock stars in London, tour the backwater pubs and clubs of Britain in a rickety van, appear on Top of the Pops, get betrayed and busted in Rome, then book a U.S. tour that changes everything. Together and apart, the band weathers family crises, mental illness, sexual awakenings, death and loss, groupies, detractors, and the Sixties' dark side. VERDICT Mitchell's sprawling, engrossing look at the psychedelic era is lovingly rendered, though some of the characters' tolerant attitudes toward homosexuality seem anachronistic. His fans will appreciate the Easter eggs and a metaphysical interlude; those who enjoy revisiting the 1960s will groove on the cameos from many celebrities of the time.--Liz French, Library Journal

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