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What is a day? It is a cell of time that can be subdivided into smaller units: 24 hours; 1,440 minutes; 86,400 seconds. It is a human fiction, a means of imposing order on an unfathomable duration called life. It is an embodied experience that can feel long or short, interesting or boring, each a unique confluence of meteorological, physiological, and sociological variables. Billions of us go through one at a time. Afterward, we expect the next to come, punctually and without fail. But what if it doesn’t? What would we do?
Ask Tara Selter. The time-stuck protagonist of Solvej Balle’s miraculous septology, On the Calculation of Volume, has been trapped in the same day with no end in sight. Tara is a rare-books seller living on the outskirts of Clairon-sous-Bois in northern France, where she enjoys a cozy and otherwise unremarkable existence. On November 17, she traveled to Bordeaux for an auction of 18th-century illustrated books, then went on to Paris, where she spent the next day browsing antiques. Time appeared to proceed normally — until she saw repeat newspaper headlines and a slice of hotel bread descending in the same airy manner as before. No matter what, it’s November 18. So she settles into this peculiar nook of time, feeling its corners and turning over its furniture.
