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Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell

by
September 2020, no. 424

Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell

Sceptre, $32.99 pb, 564 pp

Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell

by
September 2020, no. 424

With its cast of freaks and hustlers, damaged souls, and self-proclaimed geniuses, the music world seems custom-made for novelists. Yet while some excellent novels catch more than a whiff of that sweaty, drug-fuelled space where the shared exultance of music becomes something transcendent – Roddy Doyle’s The Commitments (1987), Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad (2010), Dana Spiotta’s dazzling and heartbreaking Stone Arabia (2011), and more recent entries like Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Daisy Jones and the Six (2019) and Australian author Kirsten Krauth’s excellent Almost a Mirror (2020) – the list of novels that take music seriously is surprisingly short.

James Bradley reviews 'Utopia Avenue' by David Mitchell

Utopia Avenue

by David Mitchell

Sceptre, $32.99 pb, 564 pp

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