On the Calculation of Volume II & III, by Solvej Balle

After reading On the Calculation of Volume I for my book club, I immediately went out and got II and III so I could jump right back in. Book one had a real arc and I was wondering where Balle would go with book two. I found it hard to imagine. But sure enough, books two and three go to quite different places (literally) from book one. 

 

Spoilers for both books follow.

 

Craving the expected passage of time through the change of seasons, Tara, the narrator seeks to create them for herself by traveling to various locations in Europe in a sequence that approximates the seasons she thinks should be happening at the time had time continued to progress normally. While I don't think I, personally, would have sought out winter (the first season Tara chases), this book captures much more what I imagined myself doing if I found myself in the circumstances when I read the first book. I thought, I would just go someplace. Start moving. Travel. I travel alone frequently and and I love meeting people on the way and making friendships that only last a day or a week. One thing I kept wondering as I read the first book was if I could do that forever – if that would be enough to stave off loneliness. (Another thing I thought, which has not been addressed in any of the first 3 books and seems unlikely to come up now, was that I would get a pet. You'd have to find one with the right temperament – i.e., a cat like my Little Hans, who loves everyone immediately – but I think that could go a long way when it comes to keeping company.) Anyway, travel seemed like the natural thing to do, and that is what Tara does for much of book two. But eventually she tires of traveling and attempting to recreate the seasons, and she settles down in Dusseldorf, where she begins to study – developing a somewhat bizarre obsession with the Romans and their contemporaries. 

Book 2 ends on a sort of cliffhanger, which becomes the arc of book 3: Tara (and we the readers) discover that she is not the only one stuck in this time loop. Oddly, I found parts of book 3 a bit of a slog. I say oddly, because the introduction of another character seems like it should make things more interesting. On some level it does, but a lot of exposition was required at the beginning, with Tara recording how her new companion spent his stuck time. This changed the quality of the narrative quite a bit compared to the earlier books. The "chapters" (days recorded by Tara) are much longer while we learn about how they met and catch up on the years' worth of days. But then book 3 took a few more twists and recaptured my interest. Now I'm stuck waiting until April when I can read book 4. 

Catching up on Fall Reading

Though it's true that I haven't been reading much these past several months, I have read some books. I'm neglecting this site more than I'm neglecting to read. So, to catch everyone up:

In October, I read Identitti by Mithu Sanyal for my Women in Translation book club. Truly, I have this book club to thank for keeping me reading at least a few books a year. I'm not quite sure what to say about Identitti, which is maybe why I never posted here after reading it. I found it jarring to read at first. It's hard to even explain what I mean by this, but I found the narrator to be somehow loud. The book is also full of social media posts, which I find unpleasant to encounter in book form. But the book ended up being more complex and nuanced than it seemed at first. 

Before I started Identitti, I had been reading (and really enjoying) All for Nothing by Walter Kempowski but somehow I never built up the necessary momentum on that (perhaps I will go back over the holiday break). Later I also started Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson after I found a copy on the sidewalk. I set them both aside to read Identitti, for which I had a deadline. Then one Saturday in November, I was out for a walk and I found a copy of Ancillary Justice in a little free library and I thought it might be fun to reread that, so I grabbed it and over the following 3 days I did read it again. And I loved it again. It's very refreshing to me these days to read something I know I will just tear through. 

After Ancillary Justice I didn't even attempt to read anything else. I was leaving a few days later for a weekend upstate with family and then a few days after that for a trip to Italy. I brought a copy of The Periodic Table (which I read more than 25 years ago and keep meaning to reread) with me to Italy but I never even opened it. 

Just before I left for Italy, I picked up the next book for my Women in Translation book club: On the Calculation of Volume I, by Solvej Balle. The day after I got back from my trip, I started it and I got about halfway through. I picked it up for a second time yesterday evening and finished it. I absolutely loved this book. The premise will be familiar to anyone who knows the movie Groundhog Day, but (no disrespect to the movie) this is no Groundhog Day. Stuck in a never-ending series of November 18ths, the narrator changes her approach to the day gradually in the book. She answers (though she cannot explain or account for) the troubling questions of reliving the same day, such as do the things you consume return to the world or disappear? 

The language in this book is so clear and precise and beautiful, the treatment of the situation so thought out and real. I kept thinking: this is not how I would behave in the circumstance, only to later conclude that, no, the narrator was right to behave this way and what I imagined myself doing would be a mistake. 

The "I" in the title of this book is there because there are, at present, 5 more volumes in the series (with another planned). I'm anxious to read the continuation.