A few months back, I read On the Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle, which is the first in a series of books about Tara Selter, a woman trapped reliving November 18th over and over again. As she navigates this inexplicable phenomenon, there are a few patterns that emerge. When Tara wakes up in the next November 18th, everyone else resets to where they were. The same person drops their knife at breakfast, the train passes at the exact moment, and so on. Tara, though, is able to move around and wake up and operate differently. On some occasions, she lets people in on her secret and they enjoy a largely unquestioned day together. Tara’s consumption habits have a lingering effect. For instance, if she orders the same meal at a restaurant every day, they eventually run out and it stops appearing on the menu. Also, her possessions generally follow her, though a little less consistently, if she keeps them with her when she goes to bed.
This volume was somewhat less engaging to me, since it was retreading similar ground. The mysteries and rules around this forced time non-travel are the elements of the book that are most compelling to me. For most of the book, there is not much advancement in the central conceit of the book. Instead, it revolves around three core elements:
1) Tara returns to her parents’ home for “Christmas.” Of course, it’s November 18th. But, she explains to her parents that she is reliving the same day and they accept it with relatively little fuss. She also has her sister visit with her and she gives them all gifts and they celebrate a Christmas meal together.
2) Tara chases seasons through Europe. She finds parts of Europe that are close to winter, spring, and summer in their weather, hops on the train, and travels around getting a taste for the change she has lost.
3) Tara’s bag gets stolen while she’s on a train and some of her possessions.
The issue with the book is that it seems to present new questions but does not fully explore them. For example, the question emerges of whether Tara can bring someone with her. In the first volume, her husband refuses to spontaneously travel with her and he ‘resets.’ In this volume, her sister is inquisitive about how time non-travel works and seems willing to ‘go with her’ if it’s feasible. She considers the ethics of bringing someone ‘out of time’ with her. I would love to see that idea, for example, develop further.
The moment comes up where her bag is stolen. It seems to be a moment of harrowing drama: her entire life is in that bag and it’s already a challenging hanging onto it under her pillow every night. The question of what might happen to the bag—and to Tara with its disappearance is a compelling one to explore, but Balle glosses over it a little quickly. At the time Tara is writing about the stolen bag, she has already recovered it, which sucks away some of the intensity.
I won’t spoil the ending of the book, but that’s when things really pick up. In the last five or so pages, we’re provided a cliffhanger that presents a new critical question: is anyone else experiencing the same phenomenon?
One of the throughlines from the start of the first book is an ancient Roman coin that Tara has obtained and carries around. Towards the end of the second volume, Balle provides a beautiful outline of the significance of the coin. Tara researches it, of course, but there’s one moment in particular that solidifies the symbolism of the coin. She reflects as follows:
Maybe it was simple: I was caught in time and there was the sestertius. Once it had been just metal, it had been molten, fluid, formless and then it had stopped at the moment that it was stamped with the images of Antoninus Pius and Annona, a modius, ears of corn and all. Stop. Fixed. Chink. Out onto the pile of newly minted coins. A frozen moment. (160)
I really appreciate the parallel of time being fluid like a molten liquid and then it becoming fixed into a static image. It’s as though Tara, as though Tara’s day, is fully shaped. I like that it creates this unfortunate situation where in order for something to be shaped it needs to lose its capacity for change. I think the future volumes of the book are going to explore this duality more fully.
While I felt this book was a little slower than the first and more repetitive, let’s be real: I’ll probably read the next five volumes, too, just to see if there are answers and to see if Tara returns to normal or bleeds into something even more strange. I’m not convinced there will be any clear answers, but I’ll keep you posted.
Happy reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment