Utopia Avenue. David Mitchell

This is not the first book on these pages but may well only be the second novel. Music plays such a central role in David Mitchell's latest that a review on a music blog is justified. Utopia Avenue is all about a fictive U.K./London band called Utopia Avenue. From the first meeting to the fast ending at the verge of a breakthrough.

How do I write about a book without giving clues away? How do I write about a book that I had no intention of writing about when I started reading? So let me try to explain why this book made the right kind of impression on me because of the music component.

I have read a few of David Mitchell's books. My first was 'The Thousand Summer of Jacob de Zoet', after having seen the movie 'Cloud Atlas', not knowing it was a novel, let alone by Mitchell. 'The Bone Clocks' was at least as good as the two novels already mentioned.

Utopia Avenue is not that good. People having read previous novels will recognise the name De Zoet and "horology", so there's a continuum in the writing. It is so good for other reasons. Not just because of the fact it is about music, no. In my opinion David Mitchell gets as close to the creation of music and how a band gels as is possible in writing. He almost makes his listeners feel how the first inkling of a song starts. How it is developed into the song an audience gets to know. How band members make sure they do exactly what needs to be done at the right time once on stage with that song. Mitchell shows those magical moments fans/listeners are never present at or to distant from to notice. Just one example. When the drummer starts playing a 'Take Five' rhythm in the studio, the piano player joins him (With him thinking: 'how special is this?'). Something shifts within her head and from there starts instructing the drummer, while she builds up a song in her mind. The drummer gets songwriting credits as well, showing how exceptional the bond between the four is or will be later on.

Utopia Avenue may be fictive, the people living and working in London, New York or California of 1967/68 are not. So meet David Bowie on a staircase, Brian Jones at a party, Leonard Cohen in an elevator, David Crosby on the side of a stage or John Lennon underneath a table. The cameo's are as real as they could have been and give another dimension to the book.

What is a great read as well, is the way all individual band members go through episodes of strong catharsis and all come out the better for it. The drummer being the drummer of course. That old joke even persists in this book. They all make big strides in life in very different ways.

There's one scene that is totally eerie. A young boy dressed as cowboy comes down to the party his parents are throwing for the hip of London. I'm not giving away what happens, but it does give a sign on how the book will end. That perhaps is the only weakness, as it is spelled out pages before the ending. Yes, what I expected to happen did happen in the way I imagined it from the moment Jerry Garcia's house is left behind. At least I thought that to be the end.

There's an epilogue that is totally surprising and makes me regret only one thing: That it will always remain impossible to hear the music of Utopia Avenue. Everything spells that the two albums were among the most interesting of the late 60s. A mix of folk, blues, jazz and psychedelia the world will never hear.

Being Dutch there are two minor complaints. It is 'bitterballen" and not whatever Mitchell made of it and the first gig abroad Utopia Avenue plays is at a Dutch tv program called 'Fenclup'. They play with, a pre Mariska Veres, Shocking Blue performing 'Lucy Brown Is Back In Town'. A nice gesture but that song was a hit only when Utopia Avenue has reached its end quite some time later in the book. (Unless it was released long before entering the charts of course.)

Wo.