What would you do if you knew the entire choreography of a single day by heart? If the leek you’d pulled from the garden for stock rerooted itself to the soil every morning?
It’s easy to feel trapped in life even when there’s unpredictability and variety to the sounds, colors, weather, and conversations. A fresh newspaper and a loving partner can’t always save us from monotony.
Tara Selter is a woman stuck in time, the 18th of November to be exact. Please put aside the notion you have a frame of reference. On the Calculation of Volume is not in the same universe as Murray’s Groundhog Day.
Tara works as an antiquarian bookseller with her husband, Thomas, specializing in rare, 18th-century illustrated books. Tara is the buyer, hence finding herself in Paris on the 18th of November for several work obligations. After purchasing a few tomes for clients, such as the Histoire des Eaux Potables, she visits a friend at his numismatics shop. She wakes up the next day in her hotel room, orders coffee, and unfolds yesterday’s newspaper.
Unconcerned, she plans her 19th until the ATM monitor, the weather, and Thomas all confirm that this is the second 18th of November. There’s been a collective memory wipe of the previous day.
You might think that Tara’s occupation would make her as well-suited as any for her predicament. Whatever happens to an antiquarian bookseller anyway? Funnily enough, there are seven volumes to this series. So there’s much more to come.
What instantly struck me about this book was its immersive quality. Balle and Haveland use repetition and even assonance to settle the reader into the crevices of a single day. We learn not only about the shape of the moon on the 18th of November but also about the way clouds contort that shape. And we learn even more about Tara as she begins to take stock of her quandary.
Solvej Balle’s magisterial blending of Joyce and Proust is a deceptively easy read. It’s not like she’s trying to reinvent the wheel after all—she’s only reimagining the limits of the universe. Three things stood out about this book: the spare character motivations, the increasingly complex theoretical questions, and the beautiful observances of the physical world. If you think that literary fiction is an obsolete art form or suspect that all the stories worth telling already exist, this is the book to pick up.
Translated from the Danish by Barbara J. Haveland. Published by New Directions Books.