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the complete review - fiction

On the Calculation of Volume
(Book III)

by
Solvej Balle

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B+ : solid next chapter in the series -- but leaving us still hanging, for the time being

See our review for fuller assessment.

  From the Reviews:

• "Volume III is more digressive than its predecessors, more freighted with history and philosophy. It is also looser, opening its sealed spaces to more air and light. (...) But as her focus widens, Balle introduces some welcome flashes of humour while sustaining the compulsively hypnotic effect of the first two books. And they are compulsive, there can be no doubt about that. Three volumes in, Balle's piercing attentiveness and her forensic curiosity continue to render 18 November endlessly interesting." - Clare Clark, The Guardian
  
  
• "On the Calculation of Volume is not a topical parable; it is a timeless and brilliant excavation of the ways in which we as human beings relate to ourselves, our surroundings and each other. Balle has dug a hole in the recognisable universe and started to fill it, one meticulous detail at a time, with a new world. What felt claustrophobic in the first volume feels full of possibility by the end of the third. " - Zoe Guttenplan, Literary Review
  
  
• "In Band III rücken zunehmend ethische und gesellschaftliche Überlegungen in den Vordergrund, insbesondere als mit Olga und Ralf zwei weitere in der Zeitschleife steckende junge Menschen auftauchen, die den 18. November, im Gegensatz zu Tara und Henry, als Auftrag begreifen: zur Verbesserung der Welt." - Jan Koneffke, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
  
  
• "Reading this, I was reminded of the ability Balle displayed in the first two volumes of the series to anticipate her readers’ questions. The sense persists here of the great care with which she has considered the rules of this world -- even though many remain mysterious, and some surely yet unknown to her characters. (...) This is a galvanising shift, and a subversive one. Quixotic as Olga and Ralf’s parallel missions might be, they prompt us to wonder if Tara’s behaviour up until now has been solipsistic, and the potentially anti-dramatic conceit of a day that constantly resets without consequences begins humming with new possibility." - Chris Power, The Observer

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       The third volume of the On the Calculation of Volume-septology covers day 1144 to 1892 of the day that narrator Tara Selter finds herself stuck in, waking up each morning to find it is yet again and still 18 November. She can vary things -- she wakes up wherever she goes to sleep, so she can cover large distances and spend her 18 November elsewhere, for example -- but everyone else goes through the same things yet again. Or almost everyone else: one of the advantages of the predictability of everything and everyone around her, doing exactly what they did the previous 18 November, is that when something actually is different it sticks out -- as did one Henry Dale at the conclusion of the previous volume. And, indeed, Henry is stuck in 18 November the same way Tara is -- and has been for over three years, when they meet, just as she has. (Oddly -- perhaps significantly ? --, however, he seems to have been stuck exactly one day longer than she has.)
       Both are relieved to have found another person sharing their experiences -- not that they get any wiser as to what lies behind it, or how they might escape this endless-seeming circle. Tara has spent time with her husband, explaining what she's going through, but that's a different kind of interaction, as she has to explain what's happening anew each morning. Henry, on the other hand, knows; like her, he doesn't forget the previous day's 18 November, allowing for the continuity we're used to in our lives -- and that has been absent from Tara's for so long. She's not sure how she feels about him, but there is a connection -- that: "feeling that we're bound by a common fate".
       Tara's diary-entries tend to the longer at the beginning here, describing adjusting to this new situation, but are also more occasional, at times skipping long periods: after a long entry for day 1195 the next comes only on day 1245, and the one after that on day 1344. Henry has spent some of his 18 Novembers in the United States, where his ex-wife lives with their five-year-old-son (as noted, since he and Tara wake up wherever they go to sleep, changing locales is not a problem), and after a while he goes again, arranging with Tara to remain in contact and meet every hundred days -- which they manage reasonably well.
       Tara still spends much of her time on her own and writes about the continuing process of (re)adjusting to her situation and how she handles it -- now, for example, finding:

Sometimes, I seek out new sounds. I attend concerts, I don't go just once, I listen and return, and each time there are other sounds: a hidden instrument, a note unfurling in the background, a marginal sound I hadn't heard before, an unusual timber, an unexpected echo.

She wondered why I focused only on doing as little harm as possible, on leaving only the faintest traces, that sort of thing. Rather than changing the world. Really changing it, she said, but didn't elaborate on what she meant or how it might be possible to change anything when the next morning things looked exactly the same as the morning before.

(W)e're beginning to see signs of it at the nearest supermarket. Vegetables and bread have disappeared. Yogurt and eggs. The cheese counter is growing barer, and the shelves of apricot jam and muesli are gradually emptying out.

- M.A.Orthofer, 22 September 2025

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Links:

• New Directions publicity page
• Faber publicity page
• Grasset publicity page
• Verlag Matthes & Seitz Berlin publicity page
• NN Editore publicity page
• Nordic Council Literature Prize, 2022
• Profile in The Guardian

• Ancillary Review of Books
• The Guardian
• Kirkus Reviews
• Literary Review
• literaturleuchtet (German)
• Lust auf Literatur (German)
• The Modern Novel
• The Observer
• Publishers Weekly
• Ze buk (Italian)

• On the Calculation of Volume (Book I)
• On the Calculation of Volume (Book II)

• See Index of Scandinavian literature
• See Index of Series and Sequels under review
• Index of Nordic Council Literature Prize-winning works under review

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About the Author:

       Danish author Solvej Balle was born in 1962.

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© 2025 the complete review

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