Julian Novitz

Mitchell here almost writes out some entire songs or entire verses from the music that I felt just went a little bit too far.

Given that it's a kind of eclectic band that's put together anyway, you can't say that they're like the Stones or something like that.

There's not really a concrete frame of reference from the period.

It is quite risky actually writing out the full song lyrics, though.

As you say, the description of the performance and the interactions between the band members are really enjoyable throughout.

I thought that was the difficult element of the novel in terms of the way in which he deployed these particular cameos, as they didn't quite contribute to the actual plot of the novel, weren't moving the action of the novel forward or leading to particular developments in the lives of the characters.

But also they weren't quite part of just the setting or the ambience or the milieu of the periods.

And the things they were saying were only really significant because they were these figures or these personalities from the period.

So, yeah, I mean, that's just – as I mentioned before, I thought that was one area where the novel just was – it started to feel a little bit gratuitous by the time they get to the States and they meet everyone who's anyone in the States at that particular time.

Ultimately, I found, I'm with you on this one, actually.

I think it's an enjoyable novel.

Mitchell is always a fantastic writer at a prose level, and he's great at captioning kind of the dynamism and energy of his characters.

I do think this is maybe one for established fans of Mitchell rather than a new audience, as I think

a lot of the cameos and extra appearances or sometimes extraneous scenes that we get in the story feel almost like he's just referencing his older novels for the sake of it, or he might actually be setting up a character for a future novel within this one.

So the way in which the supernatural subplot kind of plays out feels like that's very much a setup for a future novel rather than something that's significant for this one.

So

I think readers who enjoy Mitchell generally and are maybe invested in his overall kind of uber book that he's writing where everything kind of fits together across all the different installments will probably find more that's rewarding in this novel than people are coming to him blind or for the first time.

I think starting with something like Cloud Atlas or maybe Black Swan Green or The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zuid would be a better starting point if you've not read Mitchell before.

Thank you.