Hanneke's Reviews > Utopia Avenue

Expect the unexpected! Isn’t that always the case with any new novel by David Mitchell? After ‘The Bone Clocks’ and ‘Slade House’, I was certainly not expecting a straightforward narrative and I must confess that this made me initially nervous, even a bit anxious, because I feared that David Mitchell had decided to write a novel in a conventional way just to show he is capable to do that magnificently as well.

Thus, to my surprise, I did not encounter any unexpected strange or fantastical events popping up for some three-quarters of the novel. Even in the last quarter, you cannot deny that anything out of the ordinary occured. Unorthodox thoughts and deep despairs only took place in peoples' minds, thus more or less invisible.

We are being told the breathtaking tale of the rise of the psychedelic rockband Utopia Avenue from their early beginnings in damp venues in way off towns in Britain in 1967 through their successful performances in the U.S. in 1968. It is clear that David Mitchell was enjoying himself tremendously giving us his very affectionate characterizations of the four band members. They are a playful lot, expressing lots of emotions and sometimes even sentimentality which is luckily just within good taste. Three of them have great song writing talents so you just have to visualize David Mitchell’s big grins on writing those lyrics, as well as their conversations with about all the big rock stars of that time. They are all there, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Brian Jones and many more, especially David Bowie who always seemed to be lost and taking the wrong way on staircases. The most outstanding member of the band is Jasper de Zoet, Dutch, former U.K. public school boy, and the direct descendent of Jacob de Zoet, who we have previously met in The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. Jasper’s mental condition is delicate, even heartbreaking, but his guitar playing is virtuoso and is often compared to Eric Clapton’s. With the nerve wrecking peeks into Jasper’s schizofrenic mind, the fantastical enters the story and I liked that, although you had to feel sorry for Jasper. In the last part of the book, the tone of voice sometimes reminded me of ‘Jacob de Zoet’, in which the story was also sprinkled with supernatural occurances but very sparsely as well.

David Mitchell’s tales are never restricted by borders in any way, be it physical nor by time past and future and it was really pleasant when encountering old friends again. Frobischer, Luisa Rey, Marinus and a few more that will be recognized with pleasure by David Mitchell’s fans of previous novels.

This novel was almost too much of a good thing sometimes, but David Mitchell really pulled it off. I just really loved it, but then I admit I am biased with regard to David Mitchell’s writing.