Utopia Avenue

David Mitchell's 2020 novel about a fictional band, Utopia Avenue, in London in the 1960's.

Band Members
Elizabeth Frances "Elf" Holloway - vocals and keyboards

Dean Moss (Moffat) - vocals and bass guitar

Jasper De Zoet - vocals and lead guitar

Peter "Griff" Griffin - drums

Structure
The novel is arranged like songs on the band's records. Each chapter matches a Utopia Avenue song title and is told from the point of view of the band member or members who wrote the song. The chapters contain the inspiration for each song and, often, the song itself being written.

Connections to Other Works
The most significant connection to Mitchell's other works arises through Jasper de Zoet, who is descended from the title character in The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. Jasper experiences auditory hallucinations from an evil noncorporum (the spirit of Abbott Enomoto) that has traveled down through the males in his bloodline since Jacob. The hallucinations are stopped earlier in Jasper's life by a mongolian (assumed to be from the Mongolia chapter in Ghostwritten), however during the course of the book they come back. Jasper eventually encounters a group of Horologists (Marinus and Esther Little) that play a central role in The Bone Clocks, and they resolve this problem for him. Earlier in the novel Jasper also listens to The Cloud Atlas Sextet, a piece of music composed by Robert Frobisher in Cloud Atlas.

Elf Holloway becomes romantically involved with Luisa Rey (a character from Cloud Atlas and Ghostwritten) and also meets a child named Crispin Hershey, who grows up to become the writer featured in The Bone Clocks.

Levon Frankland, the manager of Utopia Avenue, also appears briefly in The Bone Clocks where he meets an adult Crispin Hershey and reminisces about how an "avant-folk combo" he used to represent had planned to make the soundtrack for one of Crispin's father's films The Narrow Road To The Deep North.

Bat Segundo, the radio station host/personality, also appears in Ghostwritten in the Night Train chapter (where he also receives a call in from Luisa Rey).