On the Calculation of Volume (II) by Solvej Balle
- Aug 2
- 3 min read
A few months ago, I wrote about my happy discovery of the first installment in the planned seven-book series On the Calculation of Volume. This inventive novel explores the idea of being trapped in time, living the same day over and over. What especially piqued my interest is that this ceaseless day – November 18th – also happens to be my birthday.
On the Calculation of Volume, written by Danish author Solvej Balle and beautifully translated by Barbara Haveland, is hard to categorize. It’s part speculative fiction and part philosophical exploration of how someone copes with the inexplicable. While the situation that has befallen Balle’s protagonist, Tara Selter, is fantastical, the loneliness and monotony she experiences in her endless time loop feel entirely relatable.
With great anticipation about where the story was headed, I embarked on Book 2, and I’m pleased to say it’s a worthy follow-up. While Book 1 ends much as it started, the second book concludes, on day 1144 of November 18ths, with a tantalizing twist that suggests a possible path forward for Tara, if not a way out. Nevertheless, there’s still no explanation for why her forever day is November 18th. I’m hoping this mystery is eventually resolved, though I may never think about my birthday the same way.
To recap: In Book 1, we meet Tara, a rare book dealer who has gone to Paris on a business trip. One morning, she wakes up in her hotel room, and it slowly dawns on her that she is reliving the prior day. Confused, she returns home to the French countryside and tells her perplexed husband everything. More days pass, yet for Tara each day remains November 18th, while her husband awakens with no memory of Tara’s ordeal. Feeling weary and alone, Tara leaves her husband behind in hopes of finding an escape hatch that leads her to November 19th.
Book 2 picks up after Tara has lived a full year of November 18ths. She decides to return to Paris in hopes of finding a clue that will help make time start moving again. But it does not. She then visits her parents in Belgium. Much like her husband, they believe her immediately when she tells them what has occurred. She asks if they can celebrate Christmas in November so she can enjoy a holiday. Eager to experience the seasons, she travels north to Norway for winter, and – seeking spring, summer and then a return to fall – to Spain, France and Germany.
Tara may be stuck in time, but she takes up space. One quirk of her existence is that anything she consumes seems to be gone for good. For example, if she eats soup at the same café every day, the café starts to run low on it. Conscious of her consumption of resources, she begins to view herself as a monster devouring the world. It calls to mind the creature in Frankenstein, who also crisscrosses Europe in a solitary state, though for wildly different reasons.
Tara, though, never seems to lose her sense of humanity. One small detail that shows her thoughtfulness toward others is that during her sojourn in Germany, where she begins attending classes at a university, she observes a professor tripping over a power cord while walking into a classroom. She then makes a habit of swinging by that classroom each day before her other lectures to move it out of his way.
Balle seems to have thought through the details of Tara’s perpetual November 18th carefully, although one part of the premise that remains unclear to me is how her financial situation works: money does not seem to be an issue, and she routinely withdraws cash from an ATM whenever she needs it. Do her funds simply replenish at the stroke of midnight each day? How is this all recorded in her bank account?
It’s been a long time since I’ve read a complete series and it’s nice to know there are several more books waiting for me. Books 3 and 4 are already available in English, and Book 5 is planned for release, fittingly, in November.
