An audio book.
The narrator, Tara, who deals in antiquarian books, relives Nov 18th over 200 times. She's aware that she doing so. Her husband has no memory of previous occurences. She informs him each day, giving proof (e.g. she keeps a count of the repetitions in a notebook; she anticipates events). The days aren't perfect repetitions. Together they try to discover the rules of this new type of existence. They stay up to watch what the clock and their mobile phones do. However, they fall asleep or forget at critical moments. They read about multiverses. She finds that she can perform actions whose effects persist to the next day whereas he can't - he's a ghost, she's a monster. She's aging, he isn't. She wonders what the triggering event was. She squats in a vacant house with a telescope. She takes her husband there.
She hopes that after a year of repetitions, time might resume. She tries to replicate the actions of a year before. At first she thinks she might have broken out of the loop.
I wanted (unfairly) some hard-SF speculation rather than the name-dropping of scientific terms. If she has proof to convince her husband why not convince a science lecturer? Perhaps they don't ask for scientific help because they don't want to be treated like guinea pigs. Perhaps they enjoy this new life.
Other reviews
- stargazer-online (From a high level perspective, On the Calculation of Volume I has similarities to Orbital, last year’s Booker Prize winner. Both books utilise displacement in the space-time continuum to make the characters reflect on the human condition. ... Whilst both novellas integrate science and philosophy in the storyline, I found On the Calculation of Volume I more layered and abstract.)
- jacquiwin (I couldn’t help but think of friends who are grappling with Long Covid or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, desperately searching for a way out of a seemingly endless loop – the frustration of having to explain their symptoms over and over again at each subsequent consultation; the glimmers of hope when a possible new treatment is tried, swiftly followed by disappointment when it fails to make a difference; and the sense of disconnection with the outside world, which continues to function normally. ... I struggled to stay engaged with the first volume of this series, partly due to the focus on its high-concept premise and philosophical musings at the expense of in-depth character development. ... I don’t feel I know Tara, even though I’ve spent the best part of 180 pp inside her head. I also found it, well, too repetitive, which is clearly a bit of a deal-breaker given the premise.)
- Tar Vol (the bulk of the story consists in her recollections of the early days of the loop—her repeated examinations of the first day in (fruitless) hope of finding a trigger, her early experiments with her husband, and her slow descent into isolation and despair—before later shifting into shorter entries sticking more closely to the current iterations of the loop, meditating on her impact on the world and attempts to break out of the pattern. ... It doesn’t really do enough to be worth reading by those who don’t plan to press on, but neither does it provide enough to whet the appetite for an extended series. It’s a pleasant read for fans of meditative time loop stories)