CBR 17 BINGO: Green (see cover image)
Translated by Barbara Haveland
Back in April, I read the first installment of Solvej Balle’s seven-part series On the Calculation of Volume and was impressed by its poetic sublimity. I wondered how she could possibly extend the concept into six more novels. I enjoyed part II, but I’m still wondering where this is going.
To recap, in part I, bookseller Tara Selter is experiencing “broken time.” She appears to be caught in a loop where she keeps experiencing November 18 over and over again. Unlike in the movie Groundhog Day, she doesn’t automatically wake up in bed in the same location day after day, but is free to move and travel, experiencing a “newish” (to her) day. But time itself never moves forward. When she goes to visit her parents, for example, she spends the night there only to have them surprised to see her in their home when they wake up once again on November 18.
At the end of Volume I, Tara had hoped that something was about to change and time would right itself once she reached a year in this time loop. Alas, that doesn’t happen. “I have passed unhindered into Year 2, or rather: I have reached the eighteenth of November number 368 in a time without years, without seasons, a time without weeks or months, with nothing but a single day that keeps recurring, and I can only imagine that it will continue to do so.”
Not much changes for Tara in Volume II, but she approaches the world a little differently. She realizes she misses seasons and decides to go in search of them. She observes, “I want snow and rime on the grass, perhaps a few days of hard frost. . . . I want March and April and a low spring sun. I want soft sunlight and Easter days. I want May and warm air. I want June and July and August, but only if they come after winter and spring.” She goes in search of the seasons by traveling to them: She takes a train further north until she reaches snow. After spending time there, she goes back south. Somewhere, on November 18, different seasons are expressing themselves, and she sets out to find them. She’s careful to find places to stay where she can hole up in confidence that nobody will notice her. She finds an apartment and convinces the landlord to let her move in immediately that same day, and then thereafter makes herself unseen by learning the landlord’s routine. She’s methodical in her quest to make as normal a life for herself as possible until she can find her way out of the time loop. “What do I miss?” she asks on day 427, “Lighting the fire in a fireplace in the living room. So I find a living room with a fireplace and logs and matches and I light a fire.”
I continued to enjoy Balle’s writing throughout Volume II, though I admit I was becoming impatient with the lack of resolution, or at least movement toward a resolution. I was unsure whether I would continue with the series (the translation of Volume III is scheduled to be released in November 2025), but something does happen on the last page to indicate a possible change. I’m looking forward now to seeing where Balle takes Tara next in her journey through a timeless world.