The amount of detail is just right, enough to be immersive but not so much that one loses the empathetic tether with the finely drawn characters. The paragraphs flow seamlessly, simultaneously delicious with detail but addictively readable. His characters and settings are as lush and finely crafted as Rembrandt paintings. This never becomes tiresome, because Mitchell’s prose is, as ever, immaculate. The plot, turning like a record, meanders and doubles back on itself as certain scenes crop up again in different chapters like leitmotifs varying from character to character. Each POV segment matches one of the band’s songs, and frequently reveals the inspirations behind the music. The story follows the band’s formation and rise to stardom, and is broken into three parts, corresponding with Utopia Avenue’s three LPs. Utopia Avenue’s music is described as “a shot of R&B with a glug of psychedelica” and “a dash of folk.” Another character calls them a “cut of Pink Floyd … a dash of Cream, (and) a pinch of Dusty Springfield.” Personally, they sounded like David Bowie’s self-titled 1969 classic or The Velvet Underground’s 1970 “Loaded.” Mitchell gives the reader scant information about the music itself, just enough to propel one’s imagination and orient the music in its cultural context, preferring instead to focus on the inspirations behind the fictional songs through narrative. A uniquely egalitarian band, they split the singing, songwriting, instrumental duties and royalties equally. The band’s members come from disparate areas of the Soho music scene: There’s Elf, a folkstress fresh from a “Sonny and Cher” type duo with an ex-boyfriend Dean, a bassist struggling for cash Griff, a jazz drummer and Jasper, a Dutch guitar prodigy. It chronicles the rise of a fictional British band called Utopia Avenue, in the era of flower power and free love. Mitchell taps into an enduring public memory for the book: the late ’60s.

Utopia avenue book