The volume of time I

Original language: Danish
Original title: On Calculation of Volume, I
Translation: Maria Rosich in Catalan and Victoria Alonso in Spanish, for Anagrama
Year of publication: 2020
Valuation: between recommendable and highly recommended

We are facing one of those books that surprises with its plot and its approach. Already in 1987, the author thought of a story in which the protagonist woke up again and again on the same day, but her intention to develop this idea and give it shape to a book was ruined when years later Dany Rubin he wrote a similar script for what would become a memorable film: Groundhog Day (“Trapped in Time”, as it was translated in these parts). So the idea, in a similar way to the plot, was frozen for years until the author decided to give it shape and publish the book in seven volumes, of which only one of them has been translated to date. And, waiting for the rest to arrive, here is the review of the first.

In the opening pages, the protagonist, Tara Selter, as a diary, describes the core of the story: «It is November 18th (…) Every day, when I lie down on the guest bed to sleep, it is November 18th, and Every morning, when I wake up, it is November 18th. Thus, the protagonist lives trapped in time, in a complex situation because at the moment in which this time jump occurs for the first time she was traveling, so her return home at night translates into her waking up at home. when I should be at the hotel. Because, even though she lives in the non-passage of time, what she does is preserved, it does transcend, and that causes her a great dilemma about how to approach this situation with a husband who does not expect her to wake up next to him. and of whom he perceives, when telling her what happened, that “having had a conversation with her and having done things that he did not remember caused him a feeling of vertigo and restlessness” as he had to accept “that our expectations about the constants of the world are based on fundamentals uncertain.” Because she wakes up every day being the same day, but what she does during the day has an impact, it is not eliminated with the night, so if she ends the night in one place the next day she wakes up in that last place even though the day is the previous one. Therefore, your only solution is to try to leave everything as it was the morning of the previous day, making the minimum changes so as not to alter the order of those who do not suffer from this disorder. Thus, since she was not at home that day because she was traveling, she begins each new day as if she were not there, avoiding her own husband and neighbors who would not understand what she was doing there when she was supposed to be away and also avoiding giving explanations that she had not understood, because the only one that made sense (reality) was very implausible.

In this way, the protagonist writes us (or writes for herself) a diary that begins on day number 121 from which she tells us what has happened to date at the same time that, as the reading progresses, we counting how he spends the days; a few days that pass in silence, in her house secretly because she should be somewhere else, and the days (or the day) pass, and she writes to kill time, or so that time does not finish her, “because the time has gone bad. Because I found a packet of papers on the shelf. Because I try to remember. Because the paper remembers. Maybe there is something healing in the phrases. But time does move forward for her, the passage of time is noticeable in her body, just as some things run out (coffee) while others are not affected by that strange event so that “it was obvious that the day was coming back.” to its starting point, but it had variations “(…) there were irregularities over time, although it was impossible to find a pattern that made sense.”

So the author presents us with a dilemma that is difficult to solve: what to do in a situation like this? Live like a missing person longing to have a life beyond the loneliness of home or try to explain what happened over and over again while trying to analyze if in those small alterations there are any clues that allow us to understand what happened? Or even going further, could it be possible that something we do alters events? Can we intervene to correct an alteration in the cosmos and reconnect at the jump point? And how to live while we do not find the solution, if there is one? Fighting to recover what was lost (or not to lose what we had) or build a new reality far from our old life? Live in company rebuilding a new day at every dawn or live in solitude with the unique company of someone who can understand us, even if it is only ourselves?

For all this, and being very clear that evaluating a seven-volume book just after finishing the first is daring, once the door is opened to the mysterious world that the author presents and knowing that its protagonist is capable of venturing into a promising future. Who are we to leave her to her free will and not follow her on this interesting adventure? Will we be able to live with it, over and over again on the same day, enjoying all the nuances it gives us and the variations that we can find in it, seeking happiness in the small details? I think so, and that is the great merit of the author.