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Utopia Avenue

The Number One Sunday Times Bestseller

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Utopia Avenue

By: David Mitchell
Narrated by: Andrew Wincott
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About this listen

Utopia Avenue might be the most curious British band you've never heard of.

Emerging 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 band produced only two albums in two years, yet their musical legacy lives on.

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 '60s drew to a close.

Above all, this bewitching novel celebrates the power of music to connect across divides, define an era and thrill the soul.

©2020 David Mitchell (P)2020 Hodder & Stoughton Limited Fiction Historical Fiction

Critic Reviews

"One of the most brilliantly inventive writers of this, or any country." (Independent)

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Wonderful story, great characters, excellent musical knowledge and an incredibly entertaining performance from the narrator. Thoroughly recommend !

Epic!

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I really enjoyed it from start to finish. His view of the mind is extraordinary.

Another David Mitchell Masterpiece

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I really enjoyed the juxtaposition of the realities of the late sixties and early seventies with the fictitious band - and especially enjoyed the description of the acid trip Dean experiences!

All my musician’s fantasies fulfilled!

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As many have noted, even for fans of David Mitchell's writing this was a hard one. What went wrong? Was it that the narrator, brave and flexible, couldn't , and maybe shouldn't be expected to, conjure up with any authenticity the voices of the familiar- Bolan, Bowie, Brian Jones, Keith Moon, Mick Jagger and Jimmy Hendrix - or fictional - the typical reader of the Daily Telegraph and an Italian promoter? Was it that the integration of the cast of sixties characters became such a cliche that the out dated attitudes of the times appeared clunky rather than cool.
Utopia Avenue attempts to build on something cleverly creative, but aside from it being quite obvious that David Mitchell has never been in a band, its main failing seems to be that it is a clumsy recreation of an era of which has been said "If you remember the Sixties, you weren't there" by an author who having been born in 1969, clearly wasn't there at all. Oops I wrote this review before I had finished the book, I wasn't even going to finish it, but something compelled me to go down the self absorbed slippery slope into the finale which frankly was too much for even a fan of his previous work.. I began to feel like I was absorbing something akin to the madness of one of the characters, we have the appropriation of Indigenous Australian culture and dialogue in German and French. as the story literally shatters through a glass darkly.

Underwhelmed on Utopia Avenue

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Sensational story that’s beautifully read! Loved listening to it (after reading it a few years back).

Utopia delivered!

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