"The third book in Balle's entrancing seven-part series, " On the Calculation of Volume," comes out today-the release date being a bit of a gimme for the publisher, New Directions, as the series' premise is that the protagonist, a woman named Tara, has gotten stuck inside an endlessly repeating November 18th. Each installment compiles hundreds of November 18ths; by the time we get to Volume III, we are into the thousands."
"Like all of us, she's poised on the cusp of a future-November 19th-but, in her case, she believes she'll never see it. Her strange situation magnifies the absurdity of our own, the pathos of our human limits. What is she supposed to do with the time she has? Read or listen to the story " Stephen Fry Is Wilde at Heart That uncertainty is echoed in the books themselves, which are fluid and amorphous, with a maybe-this, maybe-that method that keeps the reader off-kilter."
A seven-part series follows Tara, who is trapped in an endlessly repeating November 18th and accumulates thousands of identical days across volumes. The narrative emphasizes constructing meaning within repetition rather than finding escape, centering philosophical reflection and close attention to everyday objects. Emotional urgency arises from Tara's conviction that she will never reach November 19th, which intensifies existential anxieties and human limits. The prose uses a fluid, amorphous, maybe-this-maybe-that method that unsettles readers. The series crossed from Denmark to the United States in 2024 and achieved rare crossover popularity among critics and BookTok.
Read at The New Yorker
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