Utopia Avenue
DAVID MITCHELL
(SCEPTRE, 576 PP, £20)
Tablet bookshop price £18 • Tel 020 7799 4064
Utopia Avenue is the name of the band. Dean, Griff, Jasper and Elf, all musicians in their twenties, come together in London in 1966. Two years later, after some tedious tours in Britain, their LPs are in the charts; they appear on Top of the Pops and play to ecstatic audiences in Amsterdam, New York and Los Angeles.
Utopia Avenue follows the band’s hectic career. David Mitchell’s fast-moving and compelling novel takes in sweary banter, dramatic and dangerous moments, out-of-body experiences, grief and despair. A sense of changing times comes with the band’s changing fortunes; the excitement of the Sixties is signalled by long hair, paisley and velveteen, as well as by plentiful drugs and sex, and a red Triumph Spitfire Mark III. The Vietnam War, the Grosvenor Square riots and the events in Paris play in the background to a soundtrack by the Kinks, the Hollies and the Animals. Every successful song they write comes from something in their personal lives: Dean’s father’s cruelty; Elf’s lost love and revenge; Jasper’s psychiatric episodes. Stories unfold in narrative leaps, showing how early morning musings are turned into orchestrated songs with details of scales, chords and harmonies.
