One central aesthetic feature of his fiction might be described as parallel continuity: all of his works take place within a shared, interconnected setting where events and characters from one narrative directly or indirectly influence the events and characters in other narratives. More recently, however, his creative inclination has tipped decisively toward interconnection. Twenty years ago, in other words, Mitchell seemed more committed to a balance between stories that were both autonomous (in the sense of their ability to stand alone) and interconnected within a larger narrative continuity. For Mitchell’s fans, connecting all the dots is one of the great pleasures of reading his books. And if the names “Enomoto” and “Marinus” don’t mean something to you, then honestly, about one-third of Utopia Avenue will be disorienting to read. If you haven’t read Ghostwritten, then Heinz Formaggio is just a weird name for a minor character, and the disembodied “Mongolian” who aids Jasper at a key moment will seem unexplained and baffling.

If you haven’t read Cloud Atlas (2004) or seen its film adaptation, you won’t be able to fathom why the events in Utopia Avenue couldn’t take place if not for the vital musical influence of Robert Frobisher.

It’s possible to read Utopia Avenue alone, but you’d be missing much of the excitement from seeing all the various connections coming together. I don’t think that I can, in good conscience, recommend Utopia Avenue to someone who hasn’t first read at least some of Mitchell’s other works - it would be like telling someone to begin with Anne Rice’s The Queen of the Damned (1988) without first reading Interview With the Vampire (1976) and The Vampire Lestat (1985).

Time has proven me wrong Utopia Avenue does not function this way. For many years, I thought Mitchell’s larger body of work might replicate the same pattern - that each of his novels would stand alone as an autonomous literary achievement, yet also interconnect with his larger imaginative universe. When you read them together, however, you can observe how each story is “ghostwriting” (or influencing the events of) the others in subtle-yet-powerful ways. This is to say that each chapter in Ghostwritten functions as a self-contained literary experience you can read every story on its own and feel complete without needing to read any of the others. One of the things I appreciate about Mitchell’s first novel, Ghostwritten (1999), is that it offers a sequence of interconnected short stories that each stand alone perfectly. Sometimes these interconnections are subtle - Easter eggs for Mitchell’s constant readers - while at other times they are vital to the core of the narrative. Just as Endgame wasn’t simply the fourth Avengers film, however, but rather the culmination of story lines linking the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, Utopia Avenue isn’t just the conclusion of a trilogy it connects in various ways with Mitchell’s entire creative oeuvre. Although there’s (thankfully) no sign that this is Mitchell’s final creative work, it does serve as the conclusion of three books that may be regarded as a trilogy: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (2010), The Bone Clocks (2014), and, finally, Utopia Avenue. In many ways, Utopia Avenue is the Avengers: Endgame of David Mitchell’s novels. Under the guidance of the band’s manager, Levon Frankland - a queer practitioner of the “Dark Arts” - Utopia Avenue rises from obscurity to stardom during a turbulent historical moment of social change, revolutionary protest, and psychedelic enlightenment. The members of the band include Dean Moss, a blues bassist from a rough, working-class background who navigates a complicated relationship with his abusive, alcoholic father Elf Holloway, a pianist, folk singer, and songwriter coming to terms with her sexuality Jasper de Zoet, an autistic Dutch guitar virtuoso who seems haunted by severe mental illness and Peter “Griff” Griffin, a shaggy dyslexic drummer from Yorkshire. DAVID MITCHELL’S Utopia Avenue (2020) chronicles the rise of a delightfully improbable genre-defying British rock band in the late 1960s.

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