Will I love Utopia Avenue?

This novel made me feel like a hungry young rock star. That’s no small accomplishment (let alone via such electric prose), but really, it didn’t feel like fiction. It felt like an intimate docudrama of a world-conquering British rock band whose music, somehow, magically, I already knew and loved.

That’s really what astounded me the most: the music and the musical protagonists were incredibly real. As a story of the rock-and-roll life, I think it’s up there with all the great memoirs, like Keith Richards’s Life. (Disclaimer: this is absolutely a standalone novel, but if you’ve read Mitchell’s earlier novels,… show more.

I loved the setting of this book, the whole premise of the formation of a band and the way real people such as David Bowie, Jerry Garcia, Cass Eliot, and John Lennon (to name but a few) wander across the pages and interact with the fictional characters. It makes the whole thing seem real.

The five band members are well drawn, from the singer Elf, who comes across as strong and sexy, to the mysterious and troubled Jasper de Zoet. And all this detail and realism is conveyed through smooth and highly readable prose.

It’s one of the few books… show more.

Couldn’t put this book down. The story about a London-based unknown band rising to fame and collapsing afterwards in the 1960s when many musicians who would become famous in their own right, was well crafted and highly entertaining.

Music is the Best Frank Zappa once sang, but words like these are competing with it.

I’ve long been a fan of David Mitchell, so I’ll happily pick up whatever he writes. He’s one of those authors that tends to string his books together, like a little wink and a nod to his loyal readers, and there’s that wink and nod here, but you don’t have to be a reader of his to enjoy this one. Utopia Avenue is about a 60s era British band that never was. It’s fiction, but written so deftly that I seriously hopped on Spotify to make sure my parents didn’t educate me about this band. This is one that you… show more.