On the Calculation of Volume

Book 1: On the calculation of volume

by Solvej Balle, Barbara J. Haveland

Genres: Women's Fiction; Science Fiction

Synopsis

Utterly riveting, Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume (Book I) is the grand opening of her speculative fiction septology, winner of the 2022 Nordic Council Literature Prize (Scandinavia’s most important literary award) for being “a masterpiece of its time.” 

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2024

A WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK OF 2024

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE

Tara Selter, the heroine of On the Calculation of Volume, has involuntarily stepped off the train of time: in her world, November eighteenth repeats itself endlessly. We meet Tara on her 122nd November 18th: she no longer experiences the changes of days, weeks, months, or seasons. She finds herself in a lonely new reality without being able to explain why: how is it that she wakes every morning into the same day, knowing to the exact second when the blackbird will burst into song and when the rain will begin? Will she ever be able to share her new life with her beloved and now chronically befuddled husband? And on top of her profound isolation and confusion, Tara takes in with pain how slight a difference she makes in the world. (As she puts it: “That’s how little the activities of one person matter on the eighteenth of November.”)

Balle is hypnotic and masterful in her remixing of the endless recursive day, creating curious little folds of time and foreshadowings: her flashbacks light up inside the text like old flash bulbs.

The first volume’s gravitational pull—a force inverse to its constriction—has the effect of a strong tranquilizer, but a drug under which your powers of observation only grow sharper and more acute. Give in to the book's logic (its minute movements, its thrilling shifts, its slant wit, its slowing of time) and its spell is utterly intoxicating.

Solvej Balle’s seven-volume novel wrings enthralling and magical new dimensions from time and its hapless, mortal subjects.  As one Danish reviewer beautifully put it, Balle’s fiction consists of writing that listens. “Reading her is like being caressed by language itself.”

 

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Release date: November 26, 2024

Publisher: New Directions

Print pages: 164

Sample

#121

There is someone in the house. Heard as he moves around the room upstairs. When he gets out of bed or when he goes down the stairs and into the kitchen. There’s the gush of water through the pipes when he fills a kettle. The sound of metal on metal when he sets the kettle on the stove and the very faint click when he turns on the gas. Then there’s a pause until the water comes to a boil. There’s the rustle of tea leaves and paper as first one, then another spoonful of tea leaves is taken from a paper bag and poured into the teapot, then the sound of water being poured over the tea leaves, but such sounds can only be heard in the kitchen. I can hear the fridge being opened, because the door bumps against a corner of the countertop. Then there’s another pause, while the tea steeps and in a moment I’ll hear the chink of a cup and saucer being taken from the cupboard. I don’t hear the sound of the tea being poured into the cup, but I can hear footsteps moving from the kitchen to the living room as he carries the cup of tea through the house. His name is Thomas Selter. The house is a two-story stone cottage on the outskirts of the town of Clairon-sous-Bois in northern France. No one enters the back room overlooking the garden and a woodpile.

It is the eighteenth of November. I have got used to that thought. I have got used to the sounds, to the gray morning light and to the rain that will soon start to fall in the garden. I have got used to footsteps on the floor and doors being opened and closed. I can hear Thomas going from the living room to the kitchen and putting the cup down on the countertop and before long I hear him in the hall. I hear him take his coat from its peg and I hear him drop his umbrella on the floor and pick it up.

Once Thomas has gone out into the November rain there is silence in the house. Broken only by my own sounds and the soft patter of rain outside. There is the scratch of pencil on paper and the scrape of the chair on the floor when I push it back and get up from the table. There are the sounds of my footsteps as I cross the room and the very slight creak of the door handle when I open the door into the hall.

While Thomas is out I usually wander around the house. I go to the toilet, get water from the kitchen, but I soon go back to the room. I close the door and sit down on the bed or the chair in the corner, so I won’t be seen from the garden path if anyone should look in.

When Thomas returns carrying two thin plastic bags the sounds start up again. The key in the door and shoes being wiped on the mat. The crinkle of the plastic bags when he sets down his shopping. The sound of the rolled umbrella, which he lays on the chair in the hall, and a moment later that of his coat being hung on the rack by the door. I hear the repeated crinkle of plastic as he places his shopping bags on the countertop and puts things away. He puts cheese in the fridge, pops two cans of tomatoes into a cupboard and leaves a bar of chocolate on the countertop. When the bags are empty he balls them up and stows them in the cupboard under the sink. Then he closes the door and leaves them to carry on crinkling in there.

During the day I hear him in the office upstairs. I hear a swivel chair rolling across the floor and the printer churning out labels and letters. I hear footsteps on the stairs and the gentle thud on the floorboards as Thomas sets down packages and letters in the hall. I hear him in the kitchen and the living room. I hear the sound of a hand or a sleeve brushing the wall as he goes back upstairs, I hear him in the bathroom and I hear a sound from the toilet that can only be made by a man peeing standing upright.

Presently I hear him on the stairs and in the hall again, then he goes into the living room and sits down in an armchair by the window facing the road. And there he waits, reading and watching the November rain.

He is waiting for me. My name is Tara Selter. I am sitting in the back room overlooking the garden and a woodpile. It is the eighteenth of November. Every night when I lie down to sleep in the bed in the guest room it is the eighteenth of November and every morning, when I wake up, it is the eighteenth of November. I no longer expect to wake up to the nineteenth of November and I no longer remember the seventeenth of November as if it were yesterday.

I open the window and throw out some bread for the birds that will soon be gathering in the garden. They show up when there is a break in the rain. First the blackbirds, who peck at the last apples on the apple tree or the bread I’ve thrown out, and then a lone robin. Moments later a long-tailed tit flies down, closely followed by some great tits who are promptly seen off by the blackbirds. Shortly afterward the rain comes on again. The blackbirds carry on feeding for a little while longer, but when the rain gets heavier they fly off to take shelter in the hedge.

Thomas has lit a fire in the living room. He has brought in wood from the garden shed and I soon start to feel the house growing warmer. 

I heard the sounds from the hall and the living room, but now that Thomas is sitting reading, all I can hear is my pencil on the paper, a whisper, soon eclipsed by the sound of the rain.

I have counted the days and if my calculations are correct today is the eighteenth of November #121. I keep track of the days. I keep track of the sounds in the house. When it is quiet I do nothing. I lie down and rest on the bed or I read a book, but I make no sound. Or hardly any. I breathe. I get up and tiptoe about the room. The sounds carry me around. I sit on the bed or gently pull the chair out from the table by the window.

In the middle of the afternoon Thomas puts on some music in the living room. First I hear him in the hall and the kitchen. I hear him putting a kettle on the stove, hear his footsteps on the floor as he goes back through to the living room and puts on the music. Then I know it will soon clear up. The clouds will pass and there will be a glimmer of sunshine.

I usually get ready to go out as soon as the music starts. I get up and put on my coat and my boots. I stand by the door for a few moments until the music is so loud that I can leave the house without being heard, the strains issuing from the living room masking the sound of doors being opened, of footsteps on the floor and doors being closed.

I leave the house by the garden door. I slip my bag over my shoulder, softly open the guest room door, step into the hall and close it behind me. On the floor are three medium-sized envelopes and four brown cardboard packages with our name on them: T. & T. Selter. That’s us. We deal in antiquarian books, specializing in illustrated works from the eighteenth century. We buy the books at auction, from private collectors or other booksellers and then sell them on, sending them off in brown packages bearing our name. ...