On The Calculation of Volume I by Solve Balle: book review
Overview: Tara is stuck in a time loop. More precisely, she's stuck in November 18. It's not a true Groundhog Day because, while those around her reset, Tara does not. The burn on her hand from the first November 18 stays with her and heals through the successive November 18ths. Some items stay with her, are consumed across the same days repeated. Others disappear. As the book chronicles her year stuck in the time loop, Tara experiments with different approaches to living the same day over and over and tries to figure out the rules of the rip in space/time she's fallen through. Overall: 4
Characters: 4 There's not much to say for the characters here. Despite living intimately with Tara, we don't know her all that much beyond the confines of her predicament, which becomes her sole focus. We know she has a solid marriage to Thomas and that she moved to France from Denmark as a student. She runs an antiquarian bookshop with her husband and travels to find new rare books. But we don't know much of her inner world beyond her reflections on her predicament of being stripped out of time and the numbness that endures. Writing about a time loop in this style is much like writing about a character with depression. The sameness and the malaise that creates takes over every other sense. And that's a challenge. It doesn't make for the most fleshed-out, involved characters as the predicament becomes the central character. I didn't mind the lack of personal development too much here, but it did stop me from bonding with the character beyond the premise.
Plot: 4 Naturally, this is going to be a repetitive book. You read about the same day for a year. Largely, this is balanced well by skipping around on the days, backfilling, going into more detail when Tara decides to do something differently, but there is a certain sense of futility to her attempts to break the time loop that makes it hard to want to continue reading. There's little progression and a large amount of stasis that clings to Tara and her journey. Much like writing a character with depression, it's hard to pull off. Sameness isn't interesting. And while Balle certainly milks this predicament for all the revelations it's worth, it was enough to get me through this book but not enough to make me feel there's anything essential about reading six more volumes of it. I think if you're curious but unwilling to commit to a full series, this totally works as a standalone if you're okay with the ambiguous endings that are all over literary fiction.
Writing: 4 The writing in this book is phenomenal in its spareness and the way it lays bare profound things about our reality illuminated through this time loop. This feels to me like a novel that was spawned by the COVID lockdowns. I don't think that's true, but it reminded me of early in the pandemic and other periods of isolation that were personal, rather than global. Perhaps the personal isolations are the better analogy as everyone else's lives ticked on as normal while you're trying to figure out how to pass a day that feels crushingly the same as the day before. This is to say, I related to Tara's blight despite it being totally removed from our reality. This is the kind of sci-fi I like. Balle is obsessed with defining the rules of the world and having Tara be curious about and test. I hate a book that includes these aspects in an unspecific way because I feel it cheapens the tool and makes the reader feel like the writer has no sense of control. Balle is completely in control, and it's easy to get a sense that she's written exactly the book she set out to craft. It feels dazzlingly well executed, even if it does feel slow and a bit of a slog due to the repetition and inability to progress. It's a true literary novel in its unwillingness to compromise on the art for the experience or comfort of the reader. Where you come down on your enjoyment of that reality is the personal bit.
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