As you probably know, long reviews of books are not my thing. I find two-to-three paragraphs enough and any more is wasted words. If three paragraphs cannot get you to read a book then nothing will. Having said that, I have no idea how to fit my feelings and thoughts on this book in to three paragraphs. I cannot even sit here and think of how many stars to give the whole thing: instead I have individual ratings for each aspect of this book and that is what I will now do. 
 The Chimes is set in a re-imagined England, specifically in London and a few outer regions, and concentrates on Simon's story, a young man who leaves his home in Essex and travels to London. The story is told through his eyes, or more accurately, through his ears. 
 The written word is banned in this alternate world. There are no books or magazines or small pieces of paper with crudely jotted down anecdotes or poems: they are all gone and none can read them anyway. Occasionally half-written words pop up throughout the story on the sides of old buildings but they mean nothing to anyone. In its place is music. Music is the most important thing and every person in this world can play an instrument or sing a tune. It's how they all communicate, either with their own made-up songs or with hand gestures that translate as Solfege (Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti). At specific times in the day they all stop what they are doing and listen to the music that comes from the sky: The Chimes. 
 Simon doesn't remember why he is in London. Memory is not a sacred thing; it is not something they can hold on to anymore. Chimes ring out every day and they make the people forget their past. But the people have objects in their possession that can help them remember. A broken piece of china. A Lighter. A picture. A ball of string. Each night their memories are lost, but handling these objects let them remember, if only for a few moments. But Simon has started to remember things; little things at first, like what happened yesterday before the Chimes, but after a while he begins to remember other things. Things from longer ago. Even things he did with his friends; Lucian, Abel, Brennan and Clare. Conversations he had, places they had been. 
 This book is bloody complicated. Unnecessarily and necessarily so. There are few books that alienate the reader as much as this one, Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh being one of them. To begin with, you need some knowledge of music in order to fully understand what is happening because throughout words are substituted with musical words: suddenly is replaced with subito; slowly is replaced with lento. For example; "subito I am running." 
 The book has no guide except to explain solfege at the beginning; a completely and utterly pointless task. I have half a mind to provide you with a guide myself, but it is not my place to do so. If you do not read music and don't understand what subito and lento mean you will probably get lost very quickly and give up. If I had bought this book in a shop off my own bat I would have given up after only a few pages. After a while it does become almost background and those words become as pointless as suddenly and slowly are in normal narratives. 
 It is pretentious in a Classical way. By that I mean the way the Classical Music thinks it is higher than others, and the way Classical Literature thinks it is higher than others. I do not think the author intended the pretension quite like this (does any author ever really intend to be pretentious?) and you can clearly see that she has had classical training and is dearly in love with music and all of its trimmings. It is a bold thing to do and I applaud it, though it is not to my taste. 
 Cover - 5 / 5 
 Whilst I know that authors rarely have a say on their front covers, except for perhaps saying "yes, that's good", before their book goes off to be printed, and there is the age-old saying "do not judge a book by it's cover", I cannot get past the wonderful cover of this book. It is sublime. If I had not been sent this book to review, I probably would have bought it at some point down the line because of its cover. This rating has no baring on the author, the writing or the book as a whole. It is pure coincidence that is has an utterly beautiful cover, that is all. 
 Narrative - 2 / 5 
 I very often shy away from First Person Narrative (or Point of View) because I find it often far too personal to the author, as if they are living this dream world that the character inhabits. I can rarely expunge the difference between the two and the author can never truly hide it, even with a change in gender or name. 
 It was also written in very short sentences. Hemingway would be almost tearing up at the shortness of these sentences. Although I am aware they are meant to portray the thoughts of the protagonist, Simon, I still found them to be often jarring and incomplete, sometimes almost incomprehensible. 
 World Building - 4 / 5 
 This alternate London is extremely intriguing, though not without price. It is a post-apocalyptic world with an oppressive regime (though here it is not aggressively oppressive, more passive-aggressive-oppressive) and there is no technology. It is almost medieaval, but in a modern setting. Food is scarce, people are dying for no reason and there is no memory, let alone the ability to think for oneself. For being set in such a small place, it is complicated and seems vast. One often wonders of the wider world and whether it is like this, but there is no way to know. 
 Lexis, structure, etc - 3 / 5 
 The lexis was pretty terrible, in truth. Whilst this may have been a fantasy tale and using different lexis (or words) to make it seem more fantastical (like putting a 'y' in to a name instead of an 'i' to make it sound more fantastical, or calling a cow a flees) can be a dangerous path to tread. Some words remained the same as our own, like subito and lento. One would expect the musical words to make sense, as this world still retains music from the likes of Bach, but orchestra is spelt orkestra, police as poliss, and electrics as eletricks. It is infuriating and there is no meaning behind it. Whilst I understand that those saying these words would not know how they are spelt, they are not the ones writing this down. 
 There are also made-up words for everyday, normal things. A guide would be extremely helpful because even now, though I know "Eightnoch" probably means a time of day, I still cannot fathom when on Earth it is. 
 The structure is sound and extremely modern. It fits in well with the style of narrative and tone of the book. The book has parts, the parts have chapters and the chapters have paragraphs. I think if the author had tried to make it any different it would have been too much. 
 Dialogue - 3.5 / 5 
 The dialogue was fine. It read as real speech, though I felt there was too little of it at times, and quite often a lot of the information gleaned was from the dialogue only. 
 Information - 2 / 5 
 After about 100 pages there is a huge info dump. If I had bought this book as opposed to having been given it to review out of good faith, I would have stopped reading long before 100 pages. I suggest you persevere until page 100 or so, where you find out quite a lot. Most of it regards memories, specifically those of Simon's. A better threading of information from the beginning would have made it much stronger and drawn me in better. A Third Person Narrative would have provided this, but I can fully see why First Person Narrative was chosen because the way people see the world here is exactly as a First Person Narrative and not omniscient like a Third Person Narrative. 
 Influence and reference - 5 / 5 
 I loved learning about the Ravens of the Tower of London. That was something I had not come across before. Learning about music was also very interesting, despite the fact that it alienated me from the very beginning and almost kept me at arms-length throughout. 
 Contemporary - 4 / 5 
 There is no doubting this book is modern. All aspects of it scream contemporary, despite it being set in a Medieaval-esque world without technology. There is a plot line that really screams modernity, which I will not convey for fear of spoilers, and I have separate views on that entirely, but contemporary writing really threads well through this novel. With any other setting or mode/genre of writing it probably would have fallen short. 
 The Arc - 3 / 5 
 A story arc is basically how the story progresses from beginning, through the middle to the ending. (Technically there are deeper, wider notions to the story arc (about 8 "stages"), but for preservation we will just refer to the Arc as the plot thread.) 
 The story arc was slightly broken, as in it did not seem to begin at the beginning but somewhere near the middle. This occurs quite often in novels (especially first novels), where the writer tries to "set the scene" instead of just starting the story. I felt the ending to be slightly anti-climatic, but for non-spoiler reasons I will not state why, but I will say it was only because my confusion was with me throughout the novel. 
 I have not reviewed a book like this for a long time. By that I mean commenting it and analysing it like I would books when I was at University. For that I could give this book 5 / 5 stars, because I have truly missed doing that. It is not perfect and I would suggest it is not particularly written well, which could gain it only 1 / 5 stars. It was intriguing and often captivating, but then again it alienated me and occasionally I felt it beating me off for not truly understanding, making me feel uneducated and possibly a bit stupid. It was hard to get in to, but it was also hard to put down at times. I felt a resonance within me for the story it was telling, but I felt a dull echo alongside for the calamity it actually was. 
 I still do not know how many stars to give it. I have never come across a book I cannot assigned a rating to. Occasionally there will be a book that should be a 2, but I might give it a 3 for the cover or a certain way that book made me feel, or for making me laugh more than it really should have. I rarely give 5 stars because I feel people really over-sell and over-rate books and I do not believe they deserve a 5-star rating. Most of my 5-star ratings on GoodReads should actually be a 4.5 or 4.7. There are only two or three books I can honestly say should have 5.0-stars. 
 I cannot give it 1-star because it spoke to me on a deep level in a way no other 1-star book has. I cannot give it 5-stars because it was seriously flawed and, though there are no perfect books out there (that I have read yet) all of the books I have given 5-stars were given out of pure joy and adoration. I do not adore this book and I would not describe my feeling as I came out of it as joy. 
 I will probably re-read this book. I may have to, just to understand it. It has taught me a lot, mostly about music which is not an uninteresting topic to me. The storyline has almost become a by-product, but the world, the meanings and the writing is at the forefront. It is a contemporary classic, but at the same time it is not. 
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