Review by Booklist Review
In the third book of Danish author Balle's sparkling, seven-part speculative novel, former bookseller Tara Selter is still stuck in a repeating version of November 18, in which she's a little older every time she wakes up, but the world isn't. After spending the first two books getting used to her situation, she now finds, on Day 1144, something new: another human who recognizes that "time has ground to a halt." Norwegian sociologist Henry Dale is delighted to meet "a playmate" and soon moves in with her, despite Tara's misgivings. As the volume bounces through their thoughts on Roman history, philosophy, and the possible impact their situation is having on the environment, their relationship starts to fray, with Tara going to spy on her husband in France and Henry visiting his young son in the U.S., before the ending introduces a cliff-hanging new set of complications. Original and remarkably light in spirit, Balle's quirkily inventive opus casts new light on the sheer weirdness of the human condition.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In the ingenious third installment of Balle's septology, Danish rare book dealer Tara Selter is still trapped in the 18th of November. However, she now finds that she's not the only one stuck in time. At a lecture on Roman grain and rye in Dusseldorf, she encounters Henry Dale, a Norwegian sociologist who, finding that his time seems infinite, has devoted himself to learning. Tara and Henry promptly spend the next 200 days together, comparing notes on their shared experience ("We talk about the unreliability of things, the nightly transition, our bewilderment, and the little battles fought against the phenomena of the eighteenth of November"). Encouraged that "there's a future out there somewhere," Tara returns to her husband, Thomas, and tries to adjust to the fact that each morning, he has no memory of their time together the day before. But she's thrust back into the mysteries of November 18 when a manic 17-year-old girl named Olga Periti approaches her to say that she, too, is stuck, and she needs Tara's help finding her missing companion, Ralf Kern, who's also stuck in November 18. As Tara, Henry, and Olga search for Ralf, each tries to come to terms with the knowledge that if nothing can ever get better, they're "heading toward death in a world that has come to a standstill." Endlessly fascinating, supple, and tenderly human, Balle's masterpiece reaches new heights. (Nov.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A woman stuck in the same day discovers she's not alone. Tara Selter, the narrator of Balle's planned seven-volume epic, is in her third year of living in a world that has stalled on November 18 for her, but now at least she has some company. A man named Henry Dale, whom she met at a lecture about the Roman Empire, is in the same predicament. This gives her a sense of normalcy and alleviates some of the loneliness that she feels--in the second volume she hopscotched around Europe to recall what changing seasons felt like. But this connection--plus a couple more who enter the story later--also stokes a sustained discussion about how they can put their November 18 loop to good use. Do they use that time to deepen connections with family? Should they try to track all the deaths, accidents, and mishaps that happen that day and look for ways to intervene and prevent them? Does it make more sense to develop more systemic solutions? This entry in the series is more steeped in matters of sociology and philosophy than its predecessors, but it's also surprisingly light on its feet. Tara and Henry's relationship, now headquartered in Germany, isn't a romance (Tara is devoted to her husband back home in France), but it's also not quite a friendship either, based less on shared experiences than it is a shared challenge. Not only does she have the immediate challenge of figuring out how to live in a world that reboots every morning, but she needs to find a reasoning for being within it. Is it now her job to "somehow optimize reality, either through a gut renovation or by fault-finding and adjusting the details?" Can we, living in normal time, do the same? The cliffhanger ending suggests her job will get more complicated, but for the reader the series' seductive qualities are only deepening. A brainy and beguiling meditation on time and purpose. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
