“Why do you do this?”Įlf folded her arms like a wronged woman. “The past, giving up a moment.” But more than a few times, Mitchell put in some weirdly clunker lines that made me wonder if they were meant to be ironic, as when it is noted, “The silence in the studio was silent.” Or this spat between Elf and her boyfriend:īruce sighed like a patient grown-up. Jasper remarks, “It's like a lake giving up its dead.” I liked when a character observed (in reference to a man blind to his wife's illicit affair), “An ounce of perception, a pound of obscure.” Or when Jasper and his photographer girlfriend are developing some photos:Īs they watch, a ghost of Elf emerges on the paper, in a state of rapt concentration at Pavel's Steinway. Line-by-line, there was much interesting writing. (And I see that there are some reviewers who say they've read Utopia Avenue as their first David Mitchell, which is a total shame I loved The Thousand Autumns and its mindblowing climax is given away here in a few explanatory lines.) We eventually learn that this experience places Jasper as a hinge between the Horologists (last seen fighting their war with the Anchorites of the Dusk Chapel of the Blind Cathar of the Thomasite Monastery of Sidelhorn Pass in The Bone Clocks ) and the necromancer Abbot Enomoto (last seen in the eighteenth century at the Mount Shiranui monastery in Japan's remote Kirishima Mountains, in The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet ),and what started so spooky eventually felt kind of lame and deliberate. In flashback scenes to Jasper's youth, we see him confronting an experience that might be supernatural or might be mental illness, and these scenes have a real Stephen King vibe neither the character or the reader really knows what's going on or if the danger is real or hallucinatory. To briefly (and nonspoilery) address the uber verse: You'll see some familiar characters' names here (from Marinus and Esther to the band's guitarist discovering and being inspired by one of the few extant recordings of The Cloud Atlas Sextet, composed by Robert Frobisher), but this guitarist, Jasper de Zoet, is, obviously, the most direct reference and it starts so good. Somehow, though, this potential didn't pay off for me – interesting things happen in the personal lives of the characters, and I liked seeing how they turned those experiences into art I was also interested enough in seeing how the music industry works and how long and hard artists need to pay their dues to become an overnight success (yet, is there anything new in this?) but between an over abundance of real life people flitting in and out and an ultimately shoe-horned tie-in to Mitchell's uber verse (which started out fascinating and eventually disappointed me), this didn't, in the end, really feel like a book about the core characters so much as a book about the times they were moving through (And is there anything new to say about the swinging Sixties London scene? At any rate, there's nothing new here.). Filled with real life people from the artistic scene and brimming with period detail, Mitchell nails the historical novel angle and by creating four distinct and relatable characters to people his imagined band, Mitchell sets up an interesting scaffold upon which to hang conversations about art and immortality and how to live a life. Others can say, “I feel that too.” Covering a short time over 19, Utopia Avenue recounts the early days of a famed rock/folk/blues band of that name in swinging London. But as long as the art endures, a song or a view or a thought or a feeling someone once thought worth keeping is saved and stays shareable. Books turn to dust, negatives decay, records get worn out, civilisations burn. She gets her notebook from her handbag and writes, Memories are unreliable.Art is memory made public. Hundreds of people pass by. Reality erases itself as it rerecords itself, Elf thinks. Time is the Great Forgetter. ![]() ![]() The Kinks' “Waterloo Sunset” comes on the radio. (Note: I received an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.) So it is with a heavy sigh of disappointment that I sit down to write yet another three star review, acknowledging that if the rating seems harsh to a reader who loved Utopia Avenue, it may just be that I have been led to expect something more original and engaging from this author. I read the majority of David Mitchell's books before I started compiling reviews on Goodreads, and in my memory, they were all four or five star reads Black Swan Green and Cloud Atlas, in particular, remain in my memory as some of my all time favourite reads. When we're playing well, I'm here, but elsewhere, too.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |