Solvej Balle

 

I'd read and seen more recently about the Danish author Solvej Balle, and so decided to take on the first installment of her extended series, On the Calculation of Volume. 

The premise of the novel is key: a woman falls out of time and begins to relive the same day -- for what amounts, in total, to a year. She cannot understand how or why this has happens, and those around her cannot help: for they remain in time, and experience that specific day -- the eighteenth of November -- as if it were their first and only time living it. The result, as Balle writes, in a situation in which the primary character, Tara Selter, becomes overwhelmed with an abundance of memories -- but of the same singular day. Everyone else, however, experiences the inverse: they have no memory of a day which they have yet to live: they are, in a sense, free. 

For me, On the Calculation of Volume read as an exercise in existentialism. At its core -- in my reading, at least -- this was very much a novel about the need for action: that is, without action, with the decision to act, there can be no life, no meaning. If Tara Selter is stuck in the eighteenth of November that must be because, on some level, she has not willed herself to seek the next day, to act in such a way that warrants that day, that continuation.

Toward the end of the book, Balle insinuates that Selter may be able to "make room" for the next day: that is, she may be able to let the eighteenth of November wash over her, once and for all, and thus conclude that she has acted in such a way that requires more room, more time. Again, for me, this was an effective rendering of the existential dilemma around repetition and nothingness. For Tara Selter to liberate herself from the banality of a single day requires that she take action, that she think her way into something new. That point, at least, is well made. 

Ultimately, Solvej Balle succeeds in casting this complex journey -- from nothingness, to thought, to action -- as an odd celebration: of the small wonders, of the beauty in repetition, and of the fading human capacity for patience and appreciation.