I, on the other hand, had just reread “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet,” so when Jasper turns and faces the strange eyes of once-powerful priest Enomoto staring back at him in a mirror, I knew exactly who it was.
When they do break on through, Jasper is barely able to understand what’s happened. For most of “Utopia Avenue,” those forces are knocking, but they can’t come in.
It’s nothing like “The Bone Clocks,” which details an epic battle between semi-immortal forces. The meta-narrative is just a slim thread in this large novel. To those who’ve read Mitchell’s other books, it seems like a nasty soul vampire is coming, and his intentions aren’t good.ĭo you have to read Mitchell’s other books to get this one? No, not at all. To his doctors, this might sound like mental illness. Born into a wealthy family from which he’s estranged, Jasper has trouble understanding emotions and is haunted by a knocking sound so maddening that he was institutionalized. Of course Jasper’s connected to Jacob de Zoet, the Dutch clerk of Mitchell’s novel set 150 years earlier, and yet he himself doesn’t know this. The Pulitzer-winning ‘Adventures of Kavalier & Clay’ novelist talks about his new job: showrunner on CBS All Access’ ‘Star Trek: Picard.’īack to Jasper de Zoet and what some fans call the Mitchellverse. There is always a lot of play in Mitchell’s books, and this push and pull against expectations is one way to keep things interesting.īooks Michael Chabon teleports into television with ‘Star Trek: Picard’ Mitchell plays into and against those tropes - for example, he supplies his fictional foursome with plenty of drugs but also gives them a manager, Levon Frankland, who is actually decent. It’s a little hard to imagine but just plausible enough, especially in 1967 London.Įverybody knows the arc of this story: Four scrappy outsiders climb the ladder of fame to a sweet perch, from which they might just crash and burn. “Mix a shot of R&B with a glug of psychedelia, add a dash of folk and shake well,” one critic writes. After all that work, it’s time to have some fun.Ĭome on back to swinging ’60s London and meet the band: gifted but troubled Jasper de Zoet on guitar, handsome Dean Moss from Gravesend on bass, jazzy Griff Griffin on drums and, holding her own behind the keyboards, Elf Holloway. His latest, “ Utopia Avenue,” is a rock novel. He’s done historical fiction set in 1800s Japan in “ The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet” delivered one short story in tweets and an additional story for a time capsule that will be opened in 2114 penned the British bildungsroman “ Black Swan Green” and a mystery/fantasy/eco-dystopia, “ The Bone Clocks,” which somehow managed to connect all his works into a single sprawling universe. Since then, the author best known for the brilliant, boundary-smashing novel “ Cloud Atlas” has proved that he can write just about anything. It was 20 years ago today (minus a couple of months) that David Mitchell’s first book, “ Ghostwritten,” was published in the U.S. 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.If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from, whose fees support independent bookstores. The band produced only two albums in two years, yet their musical legacy lives on. 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. The Number One bestselling novel by the author of CLOUD ATLAS, 'one of the most brilliantly inventive writers of this, or any country' ( Independent).
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