On the Calculation of Volume

Tara Selter has slipped out of time. Every morning, she wakes up to the 18th of November. She no longer expects to wake up to the 19th of November, and she no longer remembers the 17th of November as if it were yesterday. She comes to know the shape of the day like the back of her hand—the grey morning light in her Paris hotel; the moment a blackbird breaks into song; her husband's surprise at seeing her return home unannounced. But for everyone around her, this day is lived for the first and only time.

Tara Selter, the heroine of On the Calculation of Volume, has involuntarily stepped off the train of time: in her world, November eighteenth repeats itself endlessly. We meet Tara on her 122nd November 18th: she no longer experiences the changes of days, weeks, months, or seasons. She finds herself in a lonely new reality without being able to explain why: how is it that she wakes every morning into the same day, knowing to the exact second when the blackbird will burst into song and when the rain will begin?

Tara Selter is searching for a way back into time. A year has passed, but Tara still wakes up to the same newspapers, and the same blank faces when she explains that she has seen this all before. Until one morning, she boards a train and finds herself in a new day. It is still the eighteenth of November, but the faces are different, the weather is colder. She realises that she has found a way out of her endless autumn.

Tara Selter has lived the eighteenth of November 1,143 times when she notices a break in the pattern; a man has changed his shirt. The man is Henry Dale and he remembers all the days that have come before. He knows that time has fallen out of joint. Now they are two of a kind: trapped in the eighteenth of November, but no longer alone. Together they learn to share their present; their voices grow hoarse recounting their small battles against it and their bewilderment at the disintegrating world.

In a sprawling villa on the outskirts of Bremen, Tara Selter is starting to settle into a new kind of eighteenth of November. Her days with Henry, Ralf and Olga revolve around the daily routines of practical chores: gathering provisions, splitting firewood. But one morning, there are five new arrivals at their wrought-iron gate. As more people continue to arrive, their home fills with movement, voices fill the air; a flurry of people asking questions, sharing their eighteenths of November.