‘Utopia Avenue’

Out of four novels of David Mitchell I’ve read so far, this is the best one. It’s witty and touching, and, unlike his other novels, it never gets boring in the middle.

It’s a story about the 1960s and a fictional British band, Utopia Avenue. Elizabeth ‘Elf’ Holloway, Dean Moss, Jasper de Zoet, and Griff, are, respectively, the lead singer, the guitarist, the electric guitarist, and the drummer. They come from different backgrounds and have different experiences, but, for a brief time, they create something unique and vibrant in the late sixties.

I don’t know how I should describe what I like about this novel. Should I make a list? Or just mention certain tropes and situations that rings so true? The feeling I was reading something authentic accompanied me during the lecture, and I simply had fun with details and easter eggs. But I also had to read the whole novel to understand that here, the characters are given a chance to change and grow. Because if you stop in the middle, you may be left with an impression that representation is tokenistic in ‘Utopia Avenue’, Dean is a villainish dumbass, and famous musicians of the era are added to the plot on the basis of ‘ look, my characters met them!‘ But it’s more complicated. Believe me.

The recent discussions about censorship and correcting old books make me realize that David Mitchell does something very interesting. His attitude is progressive at its core, but he lets his characters to be the way people must have been in the sixties. At the beginning of the book, Dean is afraid of gay men. He also soon starts to understand sexual liberation in categories of, basically, cheating on his girlfriends and rejecting responsibility. Elf has an internalized biphobia. Her sisters marries to be a housewife because that’s what the society has taught her. Jasper, a person in a mental crisis, hides his feelings and despises himself in turn. That’s how many people would have behaved back then. But this also means they would not have remained the same. This novel needs time, just as its characters. Over time, Elf embraces her sexuality. Dean becomes more tolerant when he is offered help by Devon Frankland, a manager who also happens to be gay.

The interesting thing about Devon is that he isn’t a stereotypical band manger. He doesn’t exploit the members of Utopia, he supports them and, sometimes, literally saves them. And he isn’t the only character in the novel who goes against certain expectations. Jasper de Zoet seems like a posh kid playing being a musician, benefiting from wealth and education. But he is, actually, a young man who’s been neglected by his biological father and has been in a mental crisis since his teen years. Billy, Elf’s boyfriend, looks like a nice chap who wants to amend for their break-up… unless he steals her idea to sell it for his own profit. Dean has many moments when you just want to kick his ass, but you can also see what has made him so: a childhood full of abuse and uncertainty. He has no clue how he can be responsible when his mother died prematurely, and his father was an abuser.

Another thing I like about this story is that Mitchell genuinely likes his characters and tries to evoke what people wanted and thought back then. There is hope, there are protests, there are changes in ‘Utopia Avenue’. There are stereotypes which, sadly, haven’t changed much, and there are the young opposing it. Even if the people who were young back then often do not agree with those who are young now, many things are pretty the same. You still have to explain that the length of one’s hair doesn’t have anything to do with their sexual orientation. You still have to explain that women caregivers unpaid by the state aren’t a part of ‘natural order’, but of patriarchy. You still have to point out the hypocrisy we treat different types of addictions with. Half a century has passed, and I’m listening to the same opinions…

But Mitchell has been known overall as a writer who is well aware that time isn’t simply linear. That’s why he introduces characters who have generational memories, and that’s why the Horologists from ‘The Clock Bones’, a group of people remembering their previous incarnations, are introduced in ‘Utopia Avenue’ to help Jasper de Zoet. Those who haven’t read other books by Mitchell may not enjoy certain paranormal, deus-ex-machina explanations, but I treat them more like delicious easter eggs. In his afterword to ‘The Bone Clocks’, Mitchell wrote that he had a plan of writing a long uber-novel with people reappearing across ages. He also wrote he knew that it was a megalomaniac plan. But guess what? It’s not so pathetic after all. It’s gripping and moving when it should be, just as ‘Utopia Avenue’ is.