Book review: Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell
Like many people I discovered David Mitchell through his bestselling novel Cloud Atlas. I went back and read his first two books and declared myself a big fan. I bought his next few books as hardbacks on release and loved them. But then after 2014 I for some reason didn’t pick up his next two novels – until now.
Looking back at my notes from the talk Mitchell gave in Bristol in 2014, he said he was writing “a book largely set in 1960s London and New York, due for publication in 2016”. Well that surely has to be Utopia Avenue, which was finally published in 2020. And which I finally read last month.
This is a novel about a fictional band called Utopia Avenue in 1960s London (mostly). They’re a cross-genre hybrid formed by a visionary manager, Levon Frankland, bringing together musicians he’s individually impressed by. Which at first seems like a plan so misguidedly hopeful it can’t possibly work. As these five strangers gradually become a team, life throws curveballs that could end the dream before it’s begun.
Each chapter centres around the writing of a particular song, told from the perspective of the song’s writer. All the band members and their manager get a turn – though two of the band do the majority of the writing and therefore get more chapters. It’s an interesting way to tell the story, though I did occasionally want more from the perspectives that were largely missing.
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