'The Chimes' by Anna Smaill (first half)

I am exactly half way through this fascinating, beautifully written book. It is set generations after some aural apocalypse, when order and harmony is maintained by the Carillon, a vastly powerful musical instrument which deprives the people of narrative memory, judgement and story. Identity is maintained (for all but the unfortunate memorylost) by each person’s collection of objectmemories (objects selected to recapture experiences of crucial moments for some, and a mere comfort for others), and habitual actions are given functional security by the strong but short-term bodymemory. There is no time other than musical time. The people perceive and describe their world in musical terms, and find their way about by tunes, songs and harmonies (“Words are not to be trusted. Music holds the meaning.”). Simon comes to London and falls in with a ‘pact’ who seek the conspicuously silent lumps of the Pale Lady (palladium) in the river and in the Under (tunnels beneath London), which they sell indirectly to the Order, who control the Citadel from which the Carillon (made of palladium) calls forth the Onestory at Matins and the memory-obliterating Chimes at Vespers. Secretly coached by blind Lucien, the leader of his pact, Simon begins to remember first his arrival in London, then the death of his mother, who had the ability to subversively keep and read the memories of others in their village, and begins to realise he has come to London with some sort of purpose. Where I am up to, Lucien is leading Simon on a long revelatory journey in the Under, which I won’t say anything about other than that it has the time-stopping beauty and terror of a scene in a film by Tarkovsky, and I can’t wait to finish writing these reviews and get back to reading. It is very exciting, but not exciting in the normal (plottish) sense. As far as textually possible, the reader’s realisations about this world are won in tandem with Simon’s, and the emergence of narrative from and in spite of the pervasive poetic timelessness make this a highly unusual and thoughtful book. It has some similarities to Russell Hoban’s brilliant Riddley Walker, in which a much-changed post-apocalyptic world is also treated in a language all its own, but this book is in no sense derivative and is remarkable, beautiful and rewarding in its own unique way.

February 2015