All alumni, parents and friends of Kenyon are invited to attend the next virtual book club. At this meeting of the book club the group will discuss "On the Calculation of Volume I" by Solvey Balle.
Tara Selter, the heroine of "On the Calculation of Volume I," has involuntarily stepped off the train of time: in her world, November eighteenth repeats itself endlessly. We meet Tara on her 122nd November 18: she no longer experiences the changes of days, weeks, months or seasons. She finds herself in a lonely new reality without being able to explain why: how is it that she wakes every morning into the same day, knowing to the exact second when the blackbird will burst into song and when the rain will begin? Will she ever be able to share her new life with her beloved and now chronically befuddled husband? And on top of her profound isolation and confusion, Tara takes in with pain how slight a difference she makes in the world. (As she puts it: “That’s how little the activities of one person matter on the eighteenth of November.”)
The first volume’s gravitational pull ― a force inverse to its constriction ― has the effect of a strong tranquilizer, but a drug under which your powers of observation only grow sharper and more acute. Give in to the book's logic (its minute movements, its thrilling shifts, its slant wit, its slowing of time) and its spell is utterly intoxicating.
Questions? Please contact Susan Apel ’83 P’16 at saapel17@gmail.com.