Michaela Kolowski

I love that kind of late 60s, early 70s rock and roll, psychedelic blues, post-jazz time.

But also I think it's a really hard topic to write about and he does it in usual David Mitchell style with such

humanity and with such warmth and without ever making you feel like it's not true.

He creates this amazing band also called Utopia Avenue and you really feel like they existed.

You really want to get onto Google and find out, you know, when their bootleg tapes were actually released.

And it's a very special ride, especially because he also includes in the book these passages where he physically describes what was happening in certain songs when they were on stage.

So he's describing chord progressions and he's written pages and pages of song lyrics.

So for anyone who loves music or loves the writing of David Mitchell, which should cover most people, it's a fantastic work of fiction to read.

I do, yes.

It's probably my favourite section of the book.

Jasper is this beautiful character in the story who I guess we would say is somewhere on the spectrum.

He's probably got Asperger's.

He's also a guitar god and he is giving a press conference and talks about

where ideas come from and how do they land.

And he's really talking about, I guess, what I think of as that feedback loop between social change, political change, things happening in the world.

And then there are songwriters who are somehow receptive to those things and they take all of that in and they deliver a song like The Times They Are A-Changin' or they deliver this amazing piece of music that somehow encapsulates what everyone's feeling.

And then that song, in turn, inspires a whole group

raft of people to action.

It inspires people to write.

It inspires people to change laws.