Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

What happened to David Mitchell since his Cloud Atlas masterpiece, his Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet stunner, and even his satisfying Bone Clocks? This is an author who has bended genres and brought me to my knees. However, Utopia Avenue’s coverage of the counterculture 60s feels borrowed and Wiki’d. By far, it’s the worst slog by a notable, former first-rate author that I’ve ever read, a migraine-inducing mash of mixed metaphors and insensate, ham-handed prose, bad poetry, and corny lyrics. It is riddled with clichéd, gaseous sentences that telegraph and italicize every thought and action. Here’s a passage: “Jellyfish of colored light breed and smear the dancers and Jasper’s mind is set adrift.” Then in italics, “Abracadabra, it’s a boy, why not name him Jasper?” (stop italics) “Why this name and not another?” (start italics again) “A friend? The stone? A long-lost lover?” “Plenty more where we came from. A million per droplet of the stuff of life.” Yeah, heavy, brother. Groovy. I should have been warned when Mitchell decided that Utopia’s first album would be “Paradise is the Road to Paradise.” Is this supposed to be clever? Mocking? He takes this novel seriously, and the levity is at best, puerile. How about these lyrics to their first hit, Darkroom: “We hid under trees from the rain and the dice; but under the trees the rain rains twice.” These aren’t lyrics from counterculture music; it is the trivial stuff of a bubblegum chorus. (Exceptions are Richard Harris and Donna Summer, who can eloquently leave the cake out in the rain). It opens in 1967, and the premise is the rise and fall of a British rock band. The novel is structured in six sections by the three Utopia LPs (A and B sides), and each song centers on a different band member: Romeo-ish, cheating Dean, the bassist; Lennon-ish Jasper, the watchful and schizoaffectve-ish guitarist; Elf, singer and keyboard player with man problems; and Griff, the brash and nervy drummer from Yorkshire. The characters, like the story, are trite and swirl in the self-referential Mitchellverse. Levon, the manager, is a meta-reference to Bone Clocks. Jasper de Zoet’s reference to Jacob is purposeful but insubstantial, like all of the meta- bombs. Perhaps Mitchell is reminding the reader that he once wrote novels with staying power. The author hammers home that it is the 60s by all the name-dropping and cameo appearances: Jagger, Bowie, Sandy Denny, Zappa, Joni Mitchell, Hendrix, Jerry Garcia, Nina Simone, Pink Floyd, and the list goes on. Unfortunately, like the novel, their function is flimsy and clumsy, like Marc Bolan’s, “If you want to understand me, read The Lord of the Rings. It’s that simple.” 590+ pages of buzzwords, bromides, and banalities, swirling in Mitchell’s past novels. A solid narrative stands on its own, without weak wink-wink plugs to an author’s oeuvre. The Mitchellverse feebly tries to cover the shortcomings of this hubristic epic, but I wasn’t fooled by this impersonation of an Experience. Gimme Jimi any day instead. I really dislike giving one star. So, in the spirit of 1.5, I’ll round it up to two stars.