On the Calculation of Volume (Book III)

In the ingenious third installment of Balle’s septology, Danish rare book dealer Tara Selter is still trapped in the 18th of November. However, she now finds that she’s not the only one stuck in time. At a lecture on Roman grain and rye in Dusseldorf, she encounters Henry Dale, a Norwegian sociologist who, finding that his time seems infinite, has devoted himself to learning. Tara and Henry promptly spend the next 200 days together, comparing notes on their shared experience (“We talk about the unreliability of things, the nightly transition, our bewilderment, and the little battles fought against the phenomena of the eighteenth of November”). Encouraged that “there’s a future out there somewhere,” Tara returns to her husband, Thomas, and tries to adjust to the fact that each morning, he has no memory of their time together the day before. But she’s thrust back into the mysteries of November 18 when a manic 17-year-old girl named Olga Periti approaches her to say that she, too, is stuck, and she needs Tara’s help finding her missing companion, Ralf Kern, who’s also stuck in November 18. As Tara, Henry, and Olga search for Ralf, each tries to come to terms with the knowledge that if nothing can ever get better, they’re “heading toward death in a world that has come to a standstill.” Endlessly fascinating, supple, and tenderly human, Balle’s masterpiece reaches new heights. (Nov.)