Overview
Tara Selter, the heroine of On the Calculation of Volume, has involuntarily stepped off the train of time: in her world, November eighteenth repeats itself endlessly. We meet Tara on her 122nd November 18th: she no longer experiences the changes of days, weeks, months, or seasons. She finds herself in a lonely new reality without being able to explain why: how is it that she wakes every morning into the same day, knowing to the exact second when the blackbird will burst into song and when the rain will begin? Will she ever be able to share her new life with her beloved and now chronically befuddled husband? And on top of her profound isolation and confusion, Tara takes in with pain how slight a difference she makes in the world. (As she puts it: āThatās how little the activities of one person matter on the eighteenth of November.ā)
Balle is hypnotic and masterful in her remixing of the endless recursive day, creating curious little folds of time and foreshadowings: her flashbacks light up inside the text like old flash bulbs.
The first volumeās gravitational pullāa force inverse to its constrictionāhas the effect of a strong tranquilizer, but a drug under which your powers of observation only grow sharper and more acute. Give in to the book's logic (its minute movements, its thrilling shifts, its slant wit, its slowing of time) and its spell is utterly intoxicating.
Solvej Balleās seven-volume novel wrings enthralling and magical new dimensions from time and its hapless, mortal subjects.Ā As one Danish reviewer beautifully put it, Balleās fiction consists of writing that listens. āReading her is like being caressed by language itself.ā
This book title, On the Calculation of Volume (Book I), ISBN: 9780811237253, by Solvej Balle, Barbara J. Haveland, published by New Directions (November 19, 2024) is available in paperback. Our minimum order quantity is 25 copies. All standard bulk book orders ship FREE in the continental USA and delivered in 4-10 business days.
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