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Solvej Balle: Om udregning af rumfang 3 (On The Calculation Of Volume 3)
When we left our heroine,Tsara Selter, im the last book she had been firmly stuck in the 18th of November for the equivalent of nearly three years. She goes to bed on 18 November and the next morning it is still 18 November. However this is not the case for everybody else who goes to bed one night and gets up the next morning, 19 November.
Tara has been thinking that she is alone in this predicament. However, it was inevitable that she would meet someone else with the same predicament as she has.
She is currently in Düsseldorf. She has more or less given up her life as a used book dealer because of course nothing was happening there. She also seems to have given up her life with her husband, Thomas.
One thing she has got interested in is the issue of supply lines in the Roman Empire, how did the Romans feed both the Romans in Rome but also the various legions scattered around the empire? She has been attending a lecture in German on this topic. She goes several times as her German is not too good and she has not grasped all the points. She has noticed another man attending his lecture and is very surprised to see him one day in shirt of one colour, and the next day appear in a shirt on a different colour. Unless there is something that she does that causes a change. – and we will see this later- everyone behaves exactly the same way every 18 November, she accosts him, they have coffee and talk about it. He too is trapped in 18 November and like her has no idea why and no idea how he got into it and how to get out of it.
They become friendly and decide to move in to a flat together, where they could comfort one another but, at the same time share in their misery.
He is called Henry Dale and his Norwegian. He is an academic. He had not realised the first day that it happened because he was at a conference and when he came down to breakfast, everything seemed normal. Initially he carried on with his routine and bureaucratic academic work, making proposals about changes to the curriculum, sending out standard emails and the like, before he finally grasps, that this is a complete waste of time. He realised that most of his work amounted to no more than a brief stop on the way to the wastepaper basket. He then decides that he is going to do all the things he did not have time to do before, which includes reading various works he has not read and as we see when he met Tara, attending lectures on interesting subjects.
He is far more pessimistic than she is: nowhere to hide anymore. We have come to a standstill in a time that is starting to crumble. Europe in free fall. The final days of the West.
They are both studying the Romans and find it interesting though they have a dispute about the role of women in history and women being in history when, in his view, history is mainly about men. Do you really believe, I asked, that Homer would have woven his epics the way he did if he hadn’t assisted his mother at the loom? If he hadn’t studied the shuttle’s movement, the colours’ alternation, the finished cloth? Who told Homer his first stories?
He is divorced and his ex-wife had gone to the United States with their son. He has now visited his son four times, inevitably turning up unannounced though she has allowed him to see the son on what is to her this one occasion. He has also travelled through Norway visiting his mother and other relatives.
One thing that both of them have found is that they are consuming supplies. She would go to the shop and buy food but then the the shop gradually ran out of that item. He had noticed the same thing with the sachets of jam he was eating for breakfast in the hotel where he was staying.
Being stuck stuck in a time loop is not easy. He goes back to United States to see his son and she goes back to her her husband, but it is very difficult to explain explaining the situation to him every day.
Inevitably, we are going to find these two are not the only two caught in this time loop. One day, while at home, while her husband is out, Tara hears something banging on the window. This should not happen as it has never happened before. Even if it were a bird banging into the window, it should happen every time or never. It turns out to be Olga, another person caught in a time loop and my far youngest – she is only seventeen and wants to change the world. Henry had told her where Tara lived as Tara was not answering her phone. Olga made the journey to find her. She had met another person in the time loop and they have travelled around together but she had lost touch with him and wants the help of Tara to find him. When they do eventually find him, he comes up with an interesting idea as to how they could use their situation to benefit the world.
From the readers point of view this is getting more complicated, which is, of course, a good thing. More people are turning up who are caught in a time loop. Moreover we learn about inconsistencies in what changes and what does not change.Some things disappear, others don’t Constant use generates continuity. That’s how it is. A world of cracks and inconsistencies.. Related to this is the consumption of resources. They buy food at the supermarket and the next day it is no longer available, either for them or the people who are not stuck in a time. loop.
Two more books ago and presumably some of these issues will be addressed in one or both of the books. I can only say this is the most fascinating series of books, very well thought out and very clever and could only make the reader eager to read the subs equent volumes.
Publishing history
First published in 220 2 by Pelagraf
First published in English in 2025 by New Directions
Translated by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell