It features cameos from David Bowie, Jerry Garcia, Leonard Cohen, Syd Barrett, Jackson Browne, John Lennon, Allen Ginsberg, Francis Bacon, Joni Mitchell, Steve Winwood, Keith Moon, Frank Zappa, Rick Wakeman, Cass Elliot, Sandy Denny and Marc Bolan, as well as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, Jim Morrison, and Brian Jones; the latter five, coincidentally, all members of the 27 Club.

As Mitchell's oeuvre grows, the connections between his works become more numerous, ranging from the explicit that link the novel to what might be called his overarching über-book,[4] to subtle recurrences of characters, places, and events.

[9][10] Writing for The Guardian, author Sarah Perry praised Mitchell's "consciously easeful and frictionless" prose.

[13] Writing for The New Yorker, writer Jonathan Dee felt the novel's "authenticity" was diminished by Mitchell's musical descriptions and undermined by unrealistic dialogue from the cameo characters.

[14] Ben Yagoda draws attention to a number of cases where American characters implausibly use expressions found only in British English.