Julian Novitz

I don't think it would necessarily be difficult for readers who are coming to this novel without having read the previous work,

I don't think it would be necessarily difficult for them to follow or understand or figure out what's happening.

But it does kind of connect interestingly with that past work and with the way in which now very much all of Mitchell's novels kind of intersect with each other with little kind of cameos or appearances or overlaps with characters or plot lines from his earlier work.

I think, well, there will inevitably be question marks and concerns about

I think that character in particular, and how they're integrated into the plot of these novels.

I mean, I suppose as a sidebar, I mean, I've found the kind of the recent presence of these kind of these ancient spirits or immortal characters who crop up in

a succession of his later novels to be, in general, a little distracting from the kind of the human action of the stories.

So they're very much a presence in the bone clocks, which I had kind of mixed feelings about.

And then when they show up again in Utopia Avenue, I just thought their presence in the novel, it's fine, but it's not necessarily kind of necessary or important to the present action of the story.

I just felt that they were kind of

squeezed in there as part of this overall kind of meta novel or uber book scheme that Mitchell has at the moment.

I found the kind of the human actions and the human characters in this novel more kind of compelling and interesting than a lot of the sort of the supernatural or fantastical elements that start creeping into the work, particularly towards the end of the novel.

I was not massively convinced by the song lyrics, no.

I mean, Mitchell mentions kind of quotes at some point of the novel, the statement, I can't remember who said it, but that writing about music is like dancing about architecture is kind of, you know, an acknowledgement of how difficult this is.

And I think he writes a little bit too much about the music and too much about

their sound and particularly writing out the song lyrics throughout the, the novel, because I couldn't really understand how they, how, how those, those lyrics would work in actual performance.

They, they didn't feel really true to, to, to song lyrics for me, at least.

I think, um, if you look at other novels that have been written about, about bands and about telling this kind of musical story, um,

In Espiria Street by Ian Banks or I Play the Drums in a Band Called OK by Toby Litt, we don't hear that much about the actual music they perform or play at all.

We get like a snippet or a line from a song here and there or one individual lyric that's introduced to something that's representative of their work, whereas