On The Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle

On The Calculation of Volume I was translated by Barbara J. Haveland and released in English in 2024; originally published in Danish in 2020.

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Reading the first part of a seven volume series – the final parts of which have yet to be published – is always a gamble…

Because what that means is you’re definitely going to get something that doesn’t conclusively finish, and it also means that you may well be opening yourself up to a raging literary hunger that won’t be definitively satiated for, probably, several years.

And though it’s good, yes, to have something to live for – and waiting for the concluding part of a multi volume literary epic is something, at least, something to live for – when joys feel far away, everything can seem harder…

When one can imagine and anticipate future joys, living through joylessness becomes even more of a chore and, perhaps, life itself becomes so rote and routine that sufficient joys to reach levels of comfortable contentment necessary for living feel impossible.

Yes.

You can feel like you’re going through the motions of life, waiting for something to change, for something to happen, for something to be different…

And maybe it never will be, and when you start yearning for difference yet don’t believe it will happen, that is where misery arises, understandably so, for it is unsustainable presents lost around dreams of unachievable futures that crack us, crack me, certainly.

And that – to me, at least – was what On The Calculation of Volume I was partially about.

Repetition, unsatisfactory stasis, boredom, ennui, emptiness and, crucially, a sense of escape being impossible, impossible, impossible… out of your hands, possibly out of anyone’s, and all you can hope for is a quick, painless, death, because meaningful, joyful, change is, is, is….

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There seems to be a tendency for people commenting on this book to try to avoid talking about Groundhog Day. Which – imo – is basically a text-ruining Oulipo-type formal constraint. Talking about On The Calculation of Volume without talking about Groundhog Day is like typing with your dominant hand behind your back.

Sure, there’s a skill in it, but what is gained???

I, of course, will be mentioning Groundhog Day as many times as I please.

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On The Calculation of Volume isn’t a very similar text in tone or style or plot to Zone One by Colson Whitehead, but there is something that links the two.

While that novel is the zombie genre made literary, this one is the time loop done so.

And while examples of time loop movies [and non-literary novels] aren’t quite as numerous as zombie ones, there are some very high profile ones, indeed. Groundhog Day – a hugely popular and influential film and (latterly) stage show – is the obvious example, but others exist, with particular mention for recent ones that I’ve enjoyed being Nacho Vigalongo’s 2007 film Timecrimes (which features a time machine and just three goes through the loop) and Max Barbakow’s 2020 Palm Springs, which features a similar level of Hollywood to Groundhog Day, and also features a loop that goes on and on and on and on and on. The USP in that one is that there are multiple people who are aware that they’re stuck in the same repeating day, who all remember the repetitions together and go in and out of choosing to spend time with each other. The loneliness of Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day isn’t quite matched there. But here, in On The Calculation of Volume, it is loneliness through and through and through.

This is a novel about loneliness, more than it is about anything else.

It is a-

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Right, so, the story is this: Tara Salter, an antiquarian bookseller based in the North of France, is travelling to a trade conference in Bordeaux, and on the way back she stops off in Paris for a couple of nights to visit some colleagues and friends and pick up a couple of reserved books for regular clients. She has a nice and productive, sociable, day, then goes to sleep on the evening of her second night in Paris and wakes up and it’s the same morning again, with everyone in the world (except her) returning to the state they were in the morning before. Objects seem to have returned to their previous places (save for those incredibly close to her physically) and no one else, other than her, knows that this has happened.

The day then repeats over and over and over again and this book – the first of SEVEN – covers the first year-equivalent (it isn’t a year for anyone else) as she experiences the repetition.

What makes this different from Groundhog Day – and most other time loop conceits that don’t involve a time machine – is that Tara Salter’s memory isn’t the only thing that is unaffected by the loop. Her body changes, too, with hair and nails growing, minor injuries healing and – the important bit in terms of this novel being categorised as cli-fi (climate fiction) on a lot of its marketing – everything she consumes is gone forever, too. And, also, where she goes to sleep is where she wakes up – her body does not reset.

No montage of repeated suicides, then, like in Groundhog Day, and no option to gorge and gorge and gorge and gorge without any meaningful consequence. She could read and explore and watch films, perhaps, on an indefinite basis, but the items she uses will have then always been used. Supermarket shelves begin to empty out as time passes, vegetables from her garden do not grow back once eaten… fruits plucked from trees and flowers from flowerbeds are gone, too… As she stays in the same place and tries, daily for the equivalent of months and months, to maintain her marriage (every day convincing, persuading and proving to her partner that she’s in a time loop) things risk becoming greyer around her, emptier, used up…

To take without replenishment until there is nothing left to take while being surprised this has happened, yes, is arguably an unsubtle metaphor for the way in which so many of us act within this capitalistic society we remain trapped in, but there’s nothing about the book at all that feels half-baked or patronising or dull.

This is a moving novel, then, about the disintegration of a marriage as one person changes and another stays the same… It’s a moving novel about loss and extraction and destruction… It’s a moving novel about being an antiquarian bookseller.

It’s funny in places, it’s deeply serious in others… It’s human and heartfelt and engaging and just fucking perfectly put together.

Well, then, yes, in spite of everything else, looks like I do have something to live for over the course of the next few years: the time to read six more volumes of this.

An absolute treat. I’ll be reading Volume II very, very, soon…