On the Calculation of Volume 1 by Solvej Balle (transl. Barbara J. Haveland): Here we go again

Recently shortlisted for this year’s International Booker Prize, the first book in Solvej Balle’s septology comes garlanded with praise from a wide range of writers including Jon McGregor whose endorsement swung it for me; that and its intriguing premise. On the Calculation of Volume 1 follows Tara Selter who wakes up every morning to find it’s November 18th.

We were living in two different times, that was a fact.

Tara and her husband Thomas run an antiquarian book business from their home in France. They’ve been together five years and are happy, in touch every night when Tara visits auctions looking for the eighteenth-century illustrated works they specialise in. One November 17th she sets off for Paris having booked herself into her usual hotel. The next day she picks up a few books at auction, then another couple at a specialist shop before calling in on Thomas’s friend Philip who introduces her to his girlfriend. She passes a pleasant evening but for the burn she sustains on a gas heater in Philip’s shop. It’s a run-of-the-mill business trip, finished off with her customary call to Thomas. The following day starts like any other but there’s a curious coincidence at the breakfast buffet when a guest drops a piece of bread on the floor as they did yesterday. More alarmingly, the daily paper bears the date November 18th and Thomas has no recollection of last night’s conversation. So begins a year which sees Tara trapped in that November day, able to vary her own version while others perform the same actions apparently for the first time. When she eventually returns to their home, Thomas greets her with delighted surprise, not expecting her until the next day.

Maybe there’s healing in sentences. It is day 124. Tomorrow I will write #125 and the day after tomorrow I will write #126 and there is nothing that can be done about it.

Balle’s novel is structured as a diary written by Tara hoping that it will help her understand and find a way out of her predicament. Each section is headed with the number of the current iteration of November 18th she’s living through as she records her experience – the daily recaps with an astonished Thomas, their mutual scientific investigations, the days in which they wrap themselves up in each other, her eventual retreat into the guest room and avoidance of her husband as he carries out precisely the same actions as he did the day before. Tara and Thomas’s surprisingly easy acceptance of her ordeal is a bit of a stretch but, obviously, readers’ belief must be suspended  early on. It’s a novel you’ll likely either enjoy or find infuriating. I was intrigued by the puzzle of what it might mean – a metaphor for Tara and Thomas’s marriage, a form of dementia or just your standard Kafkaesque nightmare – but I’m unlikely to continue with Balle’s series through seven volumes.

Faber & Faber London 9780571383375 192 pages Paperback (Read via NetGalley)