How would you cope if time fell apart for you but kept ticking on for the rest of the world? This is what happens to Tara, the protagonist of this episode’s ‘book guest’. The Calculation of Volume, Part 1, by Solvej Balle.
Tara Selter is an antiquarian book dealer who keeps waking up on November 18. She realises that she is trapped in a time loop and seems to be reliving this one day indefinitely while the rest of the world, including her husband, friends and family, all move on to November 19 completely unaware. While everyone and everything (except the food she consumes) resets to their exact state each morning, Tara ages and her memories accumulate.
This first volume was shortlisted for the Booker Prize last year, and the judges said, “It takes a familiar narrative trope – protagonist inexplicably stuck in the same day – and transforms it into a profound meditation on love, connectedness and what it means to exist.”
It gave us plenty to talk about in this episode, and as always, you don’t have to have read the book to (we hope) resonate with the threads we pull from it. And there are no spoilers.
Links and show notes are coming to subscribers shortly.
Something to Eat and Something to Read is a podcast for people who love reading and eating and reading about eating (and cooking), hosted by Sophie Hansen, a food writer and farmer from Orange in central-west New South Wales and Germaine Leece, a bibliotherapist and psychotherapist based in Sydney.
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We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which we are recording today – Sophie on Wiradjuri Country in central-west New South Wales and Germaine on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation in Sydney. We pay our respects to Elders past and present and extend that respect to all First Nations people listening.
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