IN VOLUME ONE, Tara Selter was preoccupied with how to break the spell and get out of November 18 and into November 19. When Volume Two opens, she has been in November 18 for over a year--that is, she has had more than 365 November Eighteenths--and she seems to have decided that for the time being she will just have to reconcile herself to being in November 18 indefinitely. If she is well and truly stuck on this day, how can she make the best of it?
She makes a kind of farewell visit to her family, explaining to them daily, as she did to her husband Thomas in Volume One, why she is popping in so suddenly on November 18. Then she simply starts moving around Europe. It occurs to her that she can create a kind of "year" of her own by traveling to a place with a wintry November 18, then a while later to a place with a springlike November 18, and so on. This creates a focus for her for a while, but eventually the tactic ceases to satisfy her, and she hits a Slough of Despond.
In her lower moments, Tara reminded me of a Clarice Lispector narrator: minutely attentive, self-aware, articulate, but at a profound loss for how to account for her own circumstances.
Tara settles into Düsseldorf. November 18 was a pleasant day there, she won't be bumping into anyone she knows, she finds comfortable accommodations, and there is lots to do: attending university lectures, for example, and studying up on the history of Rome. And then, after more than another couple of years have passed, she meets someone else who is stuck in November 18. I expect an interesting development is in store in Volume Three.
It's not suspense that keeps one reading On the Calculation of Volume, though, but the voice Balle has conjured for Tara and the resourcefulness and resilience Tara has to keep finding in herself.
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