In her visionary novel, Anna Smaill creates a world where music has replaced the written word and memories are carried as physical objects.
Anna Smaill
Both The Chimes and her book of poems, The Violinist in Spring, hint at Anna Smaill’s first love; for years she studied the violin with the intention of becoming a professional performer.
Smaill, a New Zealander, has said that she needed an ‘all-consuming focus for my idealism. Music was that place. If I had been religious, I would probably have tried to join a nunnery.’ When she found that the frustrations of making music had become too great – ‘My fingers not moving fast enough, my bow arm not being as controlled as I would want’ – her focus became writing, although the idea for The Chimes came while she was working in legal publishing in London: ‘It was my worst nightmare combined. Talking on the phone and lawyers.’
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