Utopia Avenue

A slight departure for Mitchell, as Utopia Avenue constitutes a mostly realistic novel set in the 1960s. It might be closest to Black Swan Green in style, but one section clearly evokes Horology and The Bone Clocks. Jacob de Zoet and others make cameo appearances. At the least Utopia Avenue demonstrates aptly Mitchell's versatility as an author. The novel charts the journey to success of a fictitious band. Across the pages, the reader constantly roots for them, particularly in light of the members' respective personal tragedies (estrangement from a father, cot death of a nephew, loss of a brother in a car crash and ongoing schizophrenia). It's always pleasing to read about triumph over adversity. Where critics struggled was over the appearance of real people (Lennon, Bowie, Hendrix, Cohen, et al) from the era, what they “may” (plausibly) have said and whether Mitchell accurately captures the zeitgeist of the era. As a child of the 1980s with no experience of the '60s, this was less a concern for me, and Mitchell seems to have created a compelling backdrop. His writing throughout is beautiful, and I certainly did not see the ending coming. 10 out of 10.

By David Mitchell