


Making your way through this novel feels like riding a high-end convertible down Hollywood Boulevard. Mitchell’s prose is suppler and richer than ever. David Mitchell Utopia Avenue: The Number One Sunday Times Bestseller Download Image Utopia Avenue: The Number One Sunday Times Bestseller David Mitchell c 1960 to c 1970, Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Paperback 9781444799477 RRP 22. David Mitchells kaleidoscopic novel tells the unexpurgated story of Utopia. Can we really change the world, or does the world change us? New York Times Book Review Editors Choice - Mitchells rich imaginative. Emerging from London’s psychedelic scene in 1967, and fronted by folk singer Elf Holloway, blues bassist Dean Moss and guitar virtuoso Jasper de Zoet, Utopia Avenue embarked on a meteoric journey from the seedy clubs of Soho, a TV debut on Top of the Pops, the cusp of chart success, glory in Amsterdam, prison in Rome, and a fateful American sojourn in the Chelsea Hotel, Laurel Canyon, and San Francisco during the autumn of ’68.ĭavid Mitchell’s kaleidoscopic novel tells the unexpurgated story of Utopia Avenue’s turbulent life and times of fame’s Faustian pact and stardom’s wobbly ladder of the families we choose and the ones we don’t of voices in the head, and the truths and lies they whisper of music, madness, and idealism. This is the story of Utopia Avenue’s brief, blazing journey from Soho clubs and draughty ballrooms to the promised land of America, just when the Summer of Love was receding into something much darker – a multi-faceted tale of dreams, drugs, love, sexuality, madness and grief of stardom’s wobbly ladder and fame’s Faustian pact and of the collision between youthful idealism and jaded reality as the Sixties drew to a close.Ībove all, this bewitching novel celebrates the power of music to connect across divides, define an era and thrill the soul.Utopia Avenue is the strangest British band you’ve never heard of.

But in another sense, it was just the latest installment in the great meta-novel that Mitchell has been. The band produced only two albums in two years, yet their musical legacy lives on. In one sense, David Mitchell published a new novel this year, titled Utopia Avenue.

Emerging from Londons psychedelic scene in 1967, folksinger Elf Holloway. Utopia Avenue might be the most curious British band you’ve never heard of.Įmerging from London’s psychedelic scene in 1967, folksinger Elf Holloway, blues bassist Dean Moss, guitar virtuoso Jasper de Zoet and jazz drummer Griff Griffin together created a unique sound, with lyrics that captured their turbulent times. Utopia Avenue might be the most curious British band youve never heard of.
