Book review: Forever shackled by November 18

'On the Calculation of Volume' adopts and transforms the convention that its main character must constantly live the same stretch of time

Solvej Balle’s hit series will have its next English volume in April. Picture: Wiktor Szymanowicz/Anadolu via Getty 

• On the Calculation of Volume III 
• Solvej Balle 
• Faber, £12.99 

The third book in Solvej Balle’s hit Danish series has raised the stakes, with a promise of more to come.

Groundhog Day, Edge of Tomorrow, Run Lola Run, there are a host of movies based on the principle that its main character must constantly live the same stretch of time.

On the Calculation of Volume, the seven-book series by the Danish writer, adopts and transforms the convention. 

The third instalment, On the Calculation Volume III, has just been published in English by Faber and Faber — in Danish, volume six came out earlier this year.

The main character of the series, Tara Selter, finds herself trapped in a looping November 18: She counts the days to keep track of them and records her thoughts in a journal. 

This journal is the form of the book, whose sections are divided as diary entries for different numbered November 18s.

Everyone else thinks yesterday was November 17 and tomorrow will be November 19. They wake up each morning and forget what happened the previous day. 

Tara alone is aware of just how many November 18s there have been.

What distinguishes this series from the likes of Groundhog Day is first that the repetition does not seem attached to any moral.

The point does not appear to be that Tara must relive the same day until she learns a lesson or gets something right. 

The question “why am I stuck in November 18?” becomes just as unanswerable and unavoidable as the question, “why do I exist?”.

The second remarkable thing is how Tara transforms. As days accumulate, her old life collapses: Her relationship with Thomas, her husband, becomes impossible; she no longer works; she loses all touch with money, status, and most of the ordinary cares of life.

She develops a different sort of awareness as repetition makes her pay attention to the tiniest nuances.

The third book continues this theme.

“There are new sounds,” she writes in her diary entry for the 1,583rd iteration of November 18. 

“The pen that falls to the floor has more sounds than before, a very faint sound as it rolls across the desk in the office before falling. It rolls because Thomas nudges the desk when he sits down. I hear the wheel of the office chair knock against the leg of the desk and immediately afterwards, the pen rolling off.”

To experience Tara’s heightened sensitivity to experience is one of the main reading pleasures of this series: It asks us to consider, what if we paid more attention to the basics of our experience? To sight and sound?

With the third volume, a plot has begun clearly to emerge. Tara discovers she is not alone. 

Having left her home with Thomas in the French countryside and eventually settled in Düsseldorf, she meets Henry, a sociologist from Norway who has been stuck in November 18 for the same length of time (their counts differ by one day).

The introduction of other characters living in the same loop as Tara brings a whole new dimension to the series.

As she and Henry are thrown together by circumstance, they are forced to live together despite their differences. 

Then, as even more characters are introduced — people with their own ideas and points of view.

The fourth volume is out in English next April and cannot come soon enough.