But Mitchell marvelously brings it all to life by focusing his most engaging storytelling on each band member’s own evolution, along with some experimental narrative and exceptional in-concert scenes. It’s an anticipated journey, for sure, with full doses of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.

Yorkshire jazz drummer Griff Griffin steadies the band.įrom ’67 Soho to ’68 San Francisco, this epic plot spans the band's triumphs, travails and demise. Affable, tortured-artist Jasper de Zoet is the lead guitarist whose riffs blow other musicians’ minds. Singer-keyboardist Elf Holloway’s songwriting fuels the group though her intimacies, sparking infighting and soul searching. Dean Moss, a down-in-luck bass player and songwriter, escaped an impoverished, abusive childhood playing the blues. Upstart manager Levon Frankland scours Brit clubs for talent and pulls together the makings of a folksy-bluesy-psychedelic supergroup. And bands like Utopia Avenue are vying to score record deals and become the Next New Thing. Across the pond, the Summer of Love is breaking out. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.” The Rolling Stones are embracing bad-boy fame. The Beatles are the British gold standard and soon will release the counterculture-defining “Sgt. This novel is more grounded than Mitchell’s most fantastical work: The fictional band Utopia Avenue gets its shaky start in London’s rough-and-rowdy club circuit just as rock music is exploding with originality and creativity. A few pages later, Griff, recovering from a fatal automobile accident, is contemplating quitting the band - just as it’s going big time.Īnd so it goes, one captivating page after another, two steps forward and one backward, in this deep and textured classic-rock tale written by the imaginative (he has been called a “post-modern visionary”), best-selling English author whose acclaimed novels include the Booker Prize-shortlisted “Cloud Atlas” and “number9dream.”ĥ books not to miss: Colin Jost's 'Very Punchable Face,' David Mitchell's 'Utopia Avenue' Halfway through David Mitchell’s eighth novel, “Utopia Avenue” (Random House, 592 pp., ★★★★ out of four), which follows the adventures of an emerging ‘60s British rock band, one bloke pokes the band’s bummed-out drummer Griff: “Stardom’s getting stressful, is it?” Watch Video: 4 things to know about Trump's niece's tell-all-book

David mitchell utopia avenue