First Impressions
It's an extremely misty day here in London, so misty that it's hard to see anything in the distance, and waking up to it this morning felt oddly fitting. It matches my own foggy state of mind, a sense of not really knowing where I'm going in my life or what to do next, and that has mirrored the reading I've been doing. I'm talking about the fifth volume of Solvej Balle's "On the Calculation of Volume".
When I first started this series, I thought it was a bit gimmicky to publish it as separate volumes rather than as one book all at once. But it has turned out to be genuinely poignant to read it over time. It feels as though I'm living alongside Tara, who is caught in a time loop on the 18th of November, and my state of mind frequently matches hers as we both wonder how to deal with things and how to move forward, as we all do through different stages of life.
Reading Alongside My Own Life
Filming a video about each volume as it comes out has become a way of tracking how my life has changed. When I made my video about the fourth volume, I felt content with where my life was, but I was also aware that this wouldn't stay stable. That has proved true. Over the past several months I've had a lot of uncertainty about my job and my housing, which makes me anxious about the future and unsure of the next steps.
Tara is in a similar position. In the fourth book she seemed to have found a relatively stable place, but it became unsettled and things changed, and she reconnected with her husband, Thomas, after a long time at a distance from him.
Time Leaps and a Changing Marriage
I was surprised by how big the time leap is between books four and five, and there are several more leaps within this book, in the dates of her diary entries. You have to keep up with her and work out what has happened in the intervening periods.
The book is a reflection on a relationship in which one person has changed enormously over time while the other hasn't, which makes their future together untenable. Tara speaks of the "heartbrain," considering how love and logic interact, and the difficulty of letting go when perhaps the person we're clinging to is someone from the past who no longer exists. I found that a poignant comment on our relationships: we can form strong bonds, but as time passes and circumstances change, the people in them change, and that alters everything. As Tara physically ages while Thomas doesn't, their relationship can't continue, and I found her lingering sense of mourning for it poignant and beautiful.
An Alternate Society and the Question of Knowledge
Tara finds herself uncomfortably unsure where she fits into this new reality. She believes she has found bonds with others caught in the same day, and it develops into something like an alternate society, set apart from people who aren't aware of time looping. They have to make their own rules, language and culture, and culture feels like a big part of this volume, especially the question of what knowledge means within a closed society like theirs.
Because they're caught in this loop, they can conduct experiments that people in the normal flow of time can't, an opportunity to gain insights into human experience and the wider world. They try to build a library of that knowledge. But at one point Tara questions what books really tell us. She puts it plainly: "But books are books. Not hidden keys that unlock the world." They are a touchstone to what someone was thinking at a particular time, much as her own journal entries are a key to just one moment in an existence that keeps evolving even though she lives the same day again and again.
That made me think about my own relationship with books. I think many readers who feel a compulsion to read are partly driven by the hope that if we read enough books we can understand the depths of culture and history. It’s like perpetually being on the outside and wanting to be inside that knowledge. Of course there won't be time to read every book we want to, and even if there were, it wouldn't give us all-knowing insight into the world and its mysteries.
Solitude and Uncertainty
One of the most poignant parts of the novel is when Tara goes off on her own to an area with a lake and kayaks, and lives alone in a shed. Looking out at the mist this morning, I was thinking of that famous painting ‘Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog’ by Caspar David Friedrich of a figure on a mountaintop, seen from behind, looking out over misty mountains and unable to see the full landscape. We all reach points where we feel we've established some certainty, and then everything shifts beneath us, as I've found in the past several months.
I think it comes with age that you know things will probably work out. When you're younger you can get incredibly anxious about uncertainty, and of course that persists to a degree, but there's also a knowledge that you'll find a way through. I have that sense for myself, and I have it for Tara too, even as she feels increasing melancholy and nostalgia for the time when her routine worked for her, and no longer knows where she's going.
The Series So Far
What has surprised me most is how, reading the series over a few years as new volumes appear, it has added to questions about how we exist in time, how that interacts with our sense of the present and with the memories of the past we carry as individuals. One passage I found especially poignant is when Tara reflects that this is simply the way of things, whether you're trapped in a single November day or in a time that keeps marching forward: being human means having to conceive of both long stretches of time and intense moments. It collapses the distance between her situation and ours. It does feel at points as though the narrative is treading water and doesn't know where it’s going. But then a phrase, or a way of capturing an experience, brings me back into the story and Tara’s dilemma.
There are continuing questions about how the 18th of November works and what its rules are: what stays with the people caught in it and what disappears, including knowledge and discoveries, and how the different characters hold different philosophical positions on how to handle their situation. I do find it a bit confusing keeping track of all the characters, because quite a few names were introduced in book four, especially toward the end, and many of them reappear here. But there's a core group to follow, and it's all guided by Tara and her experiences.
It's almost touching when she returns to places she visited in earlier books and I find myself remembering when she went there. It's the same as in life: as we change, our connections to particular places change too, and I'll go somewhere and remember something that happened there many years ago. The physical world can become a touchstone to our memories and our sense of the past.
Verdict
I'm enjoying following Tara's journey, and I'm anxious to see where it goes. I'm also contemplating where my own life will go in the next several months, and I guess we'll see where I am at that point. I continue to find this series a moving contemplation of big questions about life, existence and where we are in it. One caution: you can't start with book five. Balle seems to have given up any attempt to catch the reader up, so I think you need to read the volumes in order to feel the full effect. If you've been reading the series, I'd love to know your thoughts.
