The book’s four protagonists-spacey guitar hero Jasper, budding feminist Elf, angry but sensitive brawler Dean, and up-for-anything drummer Griff-create eclectic musical magic together, but their special connection threatens to fall apart at any moment. Set at the height of Swinging London’s psychedelic scene, the deeply emotional Utopia Avenue recounts a 1960s rock band’s hard-fought rise and traumatic fall. Can we really change the world, or does the world change us?ĭavid Mitchell fans sometimes focus so much on his playful postmodern quirks-like the nesting-doll structure of his best-known novel, Cloud Atlas-that they overlook what a remarkable storyteller he is. 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.

Mitchell utopia avenue