Solvej Balle, _On the Calculation of Volume, I_, trans. Barbara Haveland

THE QUICKEST WAY to describe this novel is to invoke the film Groundhog Day. Like Phil, the character Bill Murray plays in that movie, Tara Selter keeps waking up to find she is starting anew the day she lived yesterday—November 18th, in her case. The 121st time this happens, she starts keeping a journal of her experience of being stuck in the calendar, and that journal is the novel. The novel ends when she attains a full year of November Eighteenths and decides she has to get out of where she is (setting up Volume II).

Not an original concept, then, obviously, but I thought this novel was actually more interesting than (the undeniably charming) Groundhog Day for a couple of reasons.

First, this being a novel and a first-person novel at that, we get a lot more interiority than we do from a movie (from just about any movie, really—novels are the hands-down champion art form for interiority). Tara does a lot thinking about what is happening, what she can do to get back to the calendar everyone else is on, what the rules of her new mode of being are, and so on. We get to know her a lot better than we get to know Phil.

Second, her situation is more interesting than Phil’s. For one thing, she can move around. On her original November 18 she was in Paris on a book-buying trip (she and her husband are rare book dealers), but she finds that she can leave Paris and go back to her own house in her own hometown. When she wakes up in her own house, though, it is November 18th again, and her husband is surprised that she is not in Paris.

Tara tries explaining to her husband what is happening—something Phil never tries to do—and he is sympathetic and wants to help. The problem is, she has to explain it all again the next day, which is November 18 again, and eventually this wearies her. She starts staying in the ground floor guest room and avoiding her husband—whose November 18 movements she knows by heart—just to avoid the frustration of the explanation that never moves things along.

Tara also discovers that she does leave traces as one November 18 is followed by the next. If she has three apples in the kitchen and eats one, on the next November 18th there are only two applies in the kitchen. Similarly, the books she bought in Paris on November 18 are still with her the next November 18th…sometimes. 

The accidental discoveries accumulate, experiments are made, and Tara is growing towards something even though she is on some kind of time loop.

We figure out soon enough why Phil is stuck in a loop—he has to keep reliving February 2nd until he is a better person. With Tara, it’s not that simple, obviously. But why, then? Perhaps there will be some answers in Volume II.