This Writing Life

Episode 25 - Anna Smaill Part 1

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Anna Smaill is a New Zealand poet, academic and now Man Booker longlisted novelist. ----more----Her striking debut The Chimes has something of all parts of her career so far. There is music (Smaill trained as a violinist), lyricism (in evoking a world in which words have been replaced by melody), intelligence (in exploring grand narratives about connection, language, fundamentalism, technology, religion) and narrative drive: The Chimes is a love story and a dystopian mystery.

We met just before publication at RIBA. After some chatter about jet lag, we moved on to:
  • memories of London, where Smaill began The Chimes, before returning home to New Zealand
  • writing about London as an imaginative place
  • the soundtracks of London and Tokyo
  • German techno and Tokyo dancing vs Suede
  • Smaill pitches The Chimes to Stephen Spielberg (kind of)
  • the problems and danger of language in The Chimes
  • memory, communication and extremism
  • does The Chimes critique contemporary society?
  • the pros and cons of technology
  • the joy of reading
  • linear narrative vs fractured memory
  • Smaill's career anxieties
  • The Chimes returning Smail to the joys of childhood reading
  • from Phd thesis to novel writing
  • Smaill's musical past - playing the violin
  • crisis and giving up music
  • music and identity
  • music, emotion and the physical

    • I talk to Anna Smaill about her Man Booker longlist in The Independent: here.

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    This Writing LifeBy James Kidd
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