SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE In the marvelous third
installment of Balle's "astonishing" ( The Washington Post ) septology Tara's November 18th
transforms when she discovers that she is no longer alone in her endless autumnal day. For she
has met someone who remembers and who knows as well as she does that "it is autumn but that
we're not heading into winter. That spring and summer will not follow. That the reds and
yellows of the trees are here to stay. That yesterday doesn't mean the seventeenth of November
that tomorrow means the eighteenth and that the nineteenth is a day we may never see." Where
Book I and II focused on a single woman's involuntary journey away from her life and her loved
ones and into the chasm of time Book III brings us back into the realm of companionship with
all its thrills odd quirks and a sense of mutual bewilderment at having to relearn how to
exist alongside others in a shared reality. And then of course what of Tara's husband Thomas
still sitting alone day after day entirely unawares in their house in Clarion-sous-Bois
waiting for his wife to return? Blending poetry and philosophical inquiry with rich reflections
on our discombobulating times Balle's On the Calculation of Volume asks us to consider: What
is a single person's responsibility to humanity and to the preservation of this world?
