Solvej Balle's Novels Rewire the Time Loop

"Their twosome ruptures when Tara, who has travelled to Paris for an auction, wakes up on what should be the morning of November 19th to shimmers of déjà vu: the headlines in the newspaper look familiar; at breakfast, the same hotel guest drops the same slice of bread. A horrified Tara soon realizes that she is living in a repeating November 18th, while Thomas and the rest of the world go on without her."

"Balle's time loop operates according to inscrutable rules: although Tara's day refreshes, her body continues to age and her geographical location can change. Certain objects that she acquires, such as a toothbrush, stay with her, whereas others disappear overnight. When Tara first returns home to Clairon, she and Thomas orbit each other in their bucolic cottage, and she observes him with a keen tenderness, listening for his gentle thuds on the floorboards."

Tara Selter co-runs an antiquarian-book dealership with her husband Thomas in Clairon-sous-Bois, France. After a trip to Paris she wakes into a repeating November 18th while the world continues onward. Her day refreshes but her body ages, some possessions remain with her and others vanish, and her location can change. She alternates between confessing the loop to Thomas and shadowing him, but his memory resets every morning. The loop's opaque rules produce a portrait of marital loneliness as Tara constructs a life within relentless repetition, attending to small domestic details.

Read at The New Yorker