Book review | Utopia Avenue - not quite a great rock-n-roll novel

Mitchell makes all of these characters as dissimilar from each other as possible. Such differences, and the way they play off each other, are an important part of the band’s appeal, not to mention that of the book. As for their music, it can come across as a bit of a grab-bag on the page.

“Magpie-minded” is how de Zoet describes it, while others hear a combination of R&B, folk, jazz and psychedelia. In the words of a music journalist: “What do you get if you cross an Angry Young Bassist, a folk-scene doyenne, a Stratocaster demigod and a jazz drummer? Answer: Utopia Avenue, a band like no other.”

One of their tracks is even described as “a prime cut of Pink Floyd…a dash of Cream, a pinch of Dusty Springfield.” This illustrates one way to overcome the difficulty of conveying a musical experience: reference genres and musicians that the reader has already heard of.

The rise of the band follows a familiar pattern. Initial meetings result in musical differences, which lead to a mesh of playing styles. A disastrous first gig is followed by tours in a beat-up van, increasing popularity and finally, a record deal. There are affairs, alliances, accidents, and American audiences.

Appropriately, the novel is structured as a series of albums with individual tracks as chapters. These are set-pieces involving individual members of the band, studded with public triumphs and personal tragedies. In a somewhat half-hearted manoeuvre, there are also a few reproductions of postcards sent and received.

Scene-setting is an important part of any novel trying to capture a past mood, and Utopia Avenue rises to the occasion, from London’s seedy, swinging Soho to New York’s iconic Chelsea Hotel to San Francisco in the aftermath of the so-called Summer of Love. The politics of the period is also present, chiefly in the form of opposition to the Vietnam War. On occasion, though, this teeters on the brink of being expository rather than organic.

One of the voyeuristic thrills of the novel, earned or otherwise, is reading about real-life musicians who occasionally make an appearance. Among others, there are cameos by David Bowie, “a figure striding up, his trench coat flapping like a superhero’s cape”; meetings with Leonard Cohen, Janis Joplin and Jerry Garcia, who is “beaming, bearded, flannel-shirted and barefoot”; and even an encounter with John Lennon under a table.

The problem, if that’s the right word, with any new novel by Mitchell is that everyone expects it to be like Cloud Atlas, or at least Ghostwritten. As though in recognition of this, or perhaps following his own meta-purpose, he includes stylistic variations and cross-references even in novels as supposedly conventional as Black Swan Green and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.

In Utopia Avenue, this leads to a swerve in the latter stages of the novel which is quite out of place in light of what has come before. Suffice to say it involves mental acrobatics that lead back to characters from the earlier The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, with a few from The Bone Clocks for good measure. To be frank, one suspected something like this from the start, given the name of the lead guitarist.

So unusual is this manoeuvre that it threatens to overshadow much of what has come before, or comes after. This is a pity, as there is a great deal that is entertaining about Utopia Avenue. To stretch a point, it’s like listening to an album by Pink Floyd and suddenly coming across a track by Abba. Both are accomplished in their own ways, but they’re ideally kept separate.

Sanjay Sipahimalani is a Mumbai-based writer and reviewer.