Utopia Avenue
prize-winning author of Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks. Utopia Avenue is the strangest British band you’ve never heard of. Emerging from London’s psychedelic scene in 1967 and fronted by folk singer Elf Holloway, guitar demigod Jasper de Zoet, and blues bassist Dean Moss, Utopia Avenue released only two LPs during its brief, blazing journey from the clubs of Soho and drafty ballrooms to Top of the Pops and the cusp of chart success, and on to glory in Amsterdam, prison in Rome, and a fateful American fortnight in the autumn of 1968. David Mitchell’s captivating new novel tells the unexpurgated story of Utopia Avenue; of riots in the streets and revolutions in the head; of drugs, thugs, madness, love, sex, death, art; of the families we choose and the ones we don’t; of fame’s Faustian pact and stardom’s wobbly ladder. Can we change the world in turbulent times, or does the world change us?
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2recommend
3mentions
3people
2020–2022years
67% recommend33% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- If you enjoyed The Bone Clocks, consider trying the other books in that same universe. Like The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (particularly if you enjoy its historical setting of Edo period Japan on the artificial island of Deshima where the Dutch were allowed to operate a trading post), or the shorter Slade House.
Of course Cloud Atlas is well-known and a good read.
Utopia Avenue, his latest work about a fictional band in the 1960s, is a very pleasant and frankly fun read too, although different from the others. In typical Mitchell fashion, it does loosely connect to his other works and that weird über-narrative he is building. I'm looking forward to see what he'll end up doing with that.
- I am absolutely caught in a loop between refreshing reddit, hopping to twitter, hopping to Instagram, and then back to reddit — a cycle that takes just long enough for all three platforms to re-popluate with more content.
It's not healthy, and I feel bad about it.
They have got me exactly where they want me.
And like you, it's very clear that this is not conducive to human flourishing. Unfortunately, I've been caught in this, and similar loops for so long that I have a hard time knowing what flourishing even looks like anymore.
EDIT: One thing that did help me, for a time, was finding a REALLY good book, one that completely sucked me in—in this case it was David Mitchell's latest, 'Utopia Avenue'. It's been a long time since I found a really fantastic book, when you do, there's nothing better.
And I realized that the next morning, when you wake up after a long evening of reading a good book, you remember it. You remember it as being a great use of time, something you can be proud of.
An evening spent scrolling through social media is never memorable. It's never something you're proud of, something you want to tell people about.
A good night with a good book is a good use of time.
I need to remember this more often, myself.
- Thanks for the Wolfe rec; sounds like we have some tastes in common. Along those lines, I heartily recommend basically everything by David Mitchell -- and reading his works in their published order. They stand on their own, but there are myriad narrative threads and subtle literary puzzles throughout. I look forward to re-reading them in sequence -- after I devour "Utopia Avenue", which I just now learned to my delight was published 12 days ago! :)
