Ep 761 - On the Calculation of Volume (Book I), by Solvej Balle

Summary

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Overdue Podcast Ep 761 – On the Calculation of Volume (Book I), by Solvej Balle

Release Date: July 27, 2026
Hosts: Andrew and Craig

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Episode Overview

This episode covers Book I of the "On the Calculation of Volume" series by acclaimed Danish author Solvej Balle. Andrew guides Craig through the book’s structure, premise, and themes, focusing especially on its unique and contemplative take on the time loop narrative. The hosts situate Balle’s work in the context of literary trends, translation, and the recent surge in “pandemic-coded” fiction. Their discussion—often looping back in on itself, mimicking the novel’s structure—blends literary analysis with the show's characteristic wit and warmth.

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Key Discussion Points

1. About the Author & Translation Journey [05:13–16:48]

• Solvej Balle’s Background: Born 1962 in Denmark; trained in philosophy and attended "Forfatterskolen" (Writer's School).

• Career Arc: Early literary success; went through a period of fading attention and then reclaimed rights to her books. The idea for "On the Calculation of Volume" originated in 1987.

• Pandemic Resonance: Although the first book was published in 2020 and feels “pandemic-coded,” Balle conceived of the idea long before COVID-19.

• English Translation History: Barbara Haveland translated the first two volumes; subsequent volumes by other translators. Balle appreciates that new translators bring diverse voices.

• Balle on Her Character: The protagonist, Tara Selter, “has been living with [her] for decades,” and is not strictly Danish—her identity remains fluid.

• Notable Quote:
  “My book is just another time loop story. A woman, Tara Selter, is trapped in 18 November… the only way out was to write it.” – Solvej Balle [13:18]

• Translation Process: Haveland worked in stages, refining sections before compiling coherent drafts.

• Increased Interest in Translated Fiction: Streaming and exposure to global media have primed English readers for more works in translation.

2. Time Loops & Literary Precedents [21:25–26:27]

• The Hosts’ Affection for Time Loops:
  “I’ve always loved the Hollywood comedy Groundhog Day.” – Andrew [22:06]
• Genre Contextualization: This book is discussed in the lineage of other time loop works (e.g., Replay, Star Trek, Groundhog Day) but noted for its literary, not sci-fi, focus.

3. Book Structure & Narrative Voice [27:19–32:31]

• Opening Structure: The novel starts 121 days into the time loop; each chapter is a journal entry for a day.
• The Loop’s Rules:
  • The protagonist, Tara Selter, remembers everything, and her body/possessions persist across days (e.g., a burn remains, written papers stay).
  • Food and consumables disappear if not with her; money resets, but things kept close (like notes or wounds) remain.
  • She avoids direct contact with her husband, Thomas, for stability.
  • The loop is strictly about November 18th—her life prior quickly recedes, and future plans become meaningless.

4. Phases of the Loop: Emotional & Behavioral Evolution [33:05–48:38]

• Early Acceptance:
  “She pretty instantly realizes she is repeating the 18th of November.” – Andrew [33:05]
• Co-Existence with Husband:
  • At first, she wakes with Thomas, convinces him almost daily that time is looping.
  • They attempt together to map the loop’s rules.
• Progression Toward Isolation: Over time, the daily repetition creates a gulf; Tara drifts into isolation, eventually leaving their shared space.
• Hyperfixation & Expansion:

  • She notices that items kept physically close (like vegetables from the garden) persist in the loop.

  • The “calculation of volume” refers to her growing awareness of her unique physical persistence—felt as almost monstrous.

  • New hobbies (telescopes, star charts) become coping mechanisms.

    “I am a monster who is getting too big for this little room that I’m sitting in all the time; I am slowly consuming the earth because things that I eat are persistent.” – Andrew summarizing Tara, [41:59]

• Searching for Change: She experiments with new living arrangements and seeks out liminal spaces, even relocating to a vacant house.
• Anniversary as Turning Point: On the one-year mark of the loop, Tara returns to Paris, revisits locations, and tries to find the event that triggered her predicament—culminating in her (unsuccessfully) explaining her situation to acquaintances.

5. Thematic and Emotional Core [50:01–55:30]

• Repetitive, Meditative Prose:
  “This is why I began to write, because I can hear him in the house. Because time has fallen apart, because I found a ream of paper… and there may be healing in sentences.” – Quoted from the book [52:28]
• On Isolation and Love:
  • The book is more about the interior world—solitude, routine, the changing shape of relationships when experience is radically asynchronous.
  • Use of “background” people (e.g., Bread Man, Fence Runner) as anchors and reflections on real-life liminal acquaintances.
• Pandemic Coding: Both hosts and listeners note the parallels with pandemic isolation: lack of wider engagement, localized experience, and a sharply limited character set.

6. Narrative Pacing & Reader Reaction [59:32–61:09]

• Mixed Response to Pacing: Some find the novel’s “main chunk…slow and repetitive,” though others are captivated by its structure and language. Host Andrew validates that feeling: “Once you get into the ‘I’m a monster, I’m looking up at the sky’ thing, it’s like… okay, what are we doing? We’re just looking up at the sky, I guess.” – Andrew [59:56]
• Series Continuation: The ending is abrupt and open—Tara goes to sleep at the one-year mark, leaving it uncertain what comes next. This serves both as closure and as a hook for the remaining volumes.

7. Genre Subversion & Later Volumes [62:19–63:08]

• Distinct from Groundhog Day:
  “If you’re waiting for her to get to the part of a time loop novel that is your favorite part, you’re probably not gonna find it in here. She is just sitting around most.” – Andrew [61:09]
• Later Books: Subsequent volumes reportedly introduce additional characters in the loop, expanding the premise beyond strict isolation.

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Notable Quotes

• “I felt that it wasn’t the act of getting out of the loop that was interesting. What was interesting to me was the idea of stripping off what you have around you of being in the loop.” – Craig quoting Balle [26:27]
• “She’s not aggressively like a rat in a cage trying to escape… it’s always very incidental when she pushes up against a boundary.” – Andrew [40:40]
• “Why would I toss 151 days onto the floor in a heap when I can have this very short distance?” – Andrew quoting the novel [53:14]
• “My book is just another time loop story.” – Solvej Balle, via Booker Prize interview [13:18]

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Memorable Moments

• Recurring Bit: The hosts humorously restart the podcast multiple times, parodying the time loop premise. [02:57–03:16]
• Bread and Ice Cream Tangent: Extended riff about everyday recurring events (e.g., a man eating ice cream), used to illustrate how small details become significant in a loop. [33:05–34:15]
• Comparisons to Other Loops: Frequent allusions to Groundhog Day (“the Hollywood comedy Groundhog Day”) and other pop-culture time loop stories, highlighting the book’s unique philosophical angle. [22:06, 58:42]
• Contemplation of Volume: Discussion on the meaning of “volume” in the title—emphasizing the protagonist’s sense of physical and existential space. [41:56–44:12]
• Discussion of Thematic Timeliness: Hosts acknowledge the unintentional pandemic resonance and the changing appetite for translated fiction and literary experimentation.

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Important Timestamps

• [05:13] – Overview of Balle’s literary career and translation notes
• [13:18] – Balle’s reflections on the time loop concept and intention
• [27:19] – Introduction to the journal/loop structure of the novel
• [33:05] – Tara notices she is in a loop; beginning of “phases”
• [41:56] – “Calculation of Volume” as metaphor for presence and persistence
• [53:14] – Notable passage on distance, memory, and the strain of asynchronous love
• [59:32] – Host and listener reactions on pacing and narrative slowness
• [62:19] – Genre subversions; differences from typical time loop stories

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The Hosts’ Final Thoughts

• The book is a meditative, sparse, and literary approach to the time loop genre, focused more on repetition, interiority, and the slow accretion of meaning (or its absence) than on plot or character development.
• It resonates strongly with readers’ recent experiences of isolation but had its origins decades prior.
• Recommended for those who enjoy quiet, philosophical explorations of time—and aren’t expecting the zany hijinks of “the Hollywood comedy Groundhog Day.”

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Next Episode Preview

• Next book: Olive Kittredge by Elizabeth Strout

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For more:

• Find interviews with Solvej Balle and her translators on the Booker Prize and New York Times websites.
• Join the Overdue Patreon (patreon.com/overduepod) for community discussion and bonus episodes.

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Memorable closing bit:
The episode is framed and wrapped with an ever-looping self-introduction, echoing Tara Selter’s endless November 18th.

“Welcome to Overdue, it’s a podcast about the books you’ve been meaning to read. My name is Craig. My name is Andrew.” [throughout the episode]

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Transcript

[Craig]

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[Craig]

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[Craig]

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[Mandy Moore]

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[Andrew]

This is a Headgum podcast. While Andrew and Craig believe the joy of discovery is crucial to enjoying any well told tale, they will not shy away from spoiling specific story beats when necessary. Plus, these are books you should have read by now.

[Craig]

Hey everybody. Welcome to Overdue It's a podcast about the books you've been meaning to read. My name is Craig.

[Andrew]

My name is Andrew. What day is it?

[Craig]

Hey everybody, welcome to Overdue. It's a podcast about the books you've been meaning to read. My name is Craig.

[Andrew]

My name's Andrew. I feel like we did this already.

[Craig]

Hey, everybody, welcome to Overdue.

[Andrew]

Oh, man.

[Craig]

My name is Craig. Welcome to podcast. Books, meaning to read.

[Andrew]

I feel now he's broken. Now his brain's broken by the time loop. Good, great. How am I going to deal with this at this late date?

[Craig]

Andrew, we're starting a new podcast called overdue here in 2013.

[Andrew]

If it's 2013, my dude, I got some stuff I gotta tell you about

[Craig]

some investments to make.

[Andrew]

You're gonna need to sit down and I'm gonna need to go invest in Nvidia or something.

[Craig]

Welcome to our book podcast where each week and every day thereafter, one of us reads a book and tells the other person about it.

[Andrew]

Andrew, every day after this, you could

[Craig]

listen to the podcast just over and over and over.

[Andrew]

Sure. Okay. I thought you were committing us to an aggressive new release schedule.

[Craig]

Well, I'll wake up tomorrow and see if it's a different day. Tell me about what book you read this day and this weekend. Forever after.

[Andrew]

I read the first book of the on the Calculation of Volume Series by Solvay Bala.

[Craig]

Oh, are you a Solvay baller too?

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Great.

[Andrew]

I wish it was a little bit taller. I wish I was a baller.

[Craig]

Solvay, say this was. This is an award winning series. Many prizes in Europe and Scandinavia. Won the Nordic Council literature prize in 2022. Seemed to take off in the last 2ish years here in the States.

[Andrew]

I assume it's related to Booktok in some way.

[Craig]

I. I think it's come up on Booktok. It also, like the English translation hit in 24 and then was. It was Barbara Haviland's English translation of the first volume which you read and then she would do volume. Book two. I don't want to say volume.

[Andrew]

You can't say volume because it's part of the name, which is frustrating because

[Craig]

it is a book. And so I know I say book two. That sounds weird too. And that first book was long listed for the National Book Award for Translated Literature.

[Andrew]

Like that. A lot of the translations have been released on November 18th. That's cute. Oh, that is because that's the day. That's the day that she's trapped in. In the book.

[Craig]

It was also Shortlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize for Translation, I believe Bala said. Remarked upon getting that nomination. Enjoying it, but then being glad she didn't win. Quote, like being invited to a party but not having to stay and clean the dishes. She seems like an interesting lady.

[Andrew]

Sure.

[Craig]

She was born in 1962.

[Andrew]

It's an honor just to be nominated. And that's all that I would like to be honored with. Thank you very much.

[Craig]

Born in 1962 in Bov Sunderland. I got that and won. She studied at the University of Copenhagen, got a Master of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Southern Denmark, attended the Forfaterskolen, which was a. Or it is a writing school created by the Danish Ministry of Culture. I believe she was in the inaugural class in 87, 89 or so. There's a good profile of her from 2025 in the new York Times.

[Andrew]

New York Times, yeah.

[Craig]

Written by Dennis Zhu and a few other background details on her. She did travel to Paris in her twenties. She basically spent her twenties traveling around. She had written some short stories. When she was 16. A publisher was like, you keep writing. She's like, I'm going to travel around. And then you can do both.

[Andrew]

You can write anywhere, as I found in my many years as a writer.

[Craig]

Some in Europe, some in the cities.

[Andrew]

You can also not write anywhere.

[Craig]

That's also.

[Andrew]

I also found that out in my career as a writer.

[Craig]

And then, yeah, she heads to the writer's school. And that New York Times profile puts her, like, as a Danish woman author in that place of, like, a generation of women who are, like, moving away from kind of confessional, autobiographical, adjacent work into more what they call objective work or, you know, moving away from psychology. She, the New York Times writer, says, like, what does the world look like if readers are forced to take the feminine experience as a given, as opposed to writing stories that are, like, trying to advocate for it.

[Andrew]

Sure.

[Craig]

Her first novel is called the Lyrebird. The Instrument. No, an instrument.

[Andrew]

Oh, okay.

[Craig]

There's a liar bird and a truth bird. Published in 1984. Next she had a book of prose. The title is the Ampersand. It's just an ampersand.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

Like the symbol 1990. In 93, she published 1990.

[Andrew]

You're like, I'm gonna make a book that's gonna break every database. Yeah, that's gonna be. That's gonna be what I contribute.

[Craig]

93. She publishes a short story collection that came to English in 96. I believe it was also translated by Barbara Haviland called the According to The law Four Accounts of mankind. And that was, I believe, her breakthrough work. Before this, she was kind of heralded as this, you know, big successful Danish writer. She kind of doesn't like the publicity as much. She had gotten divorced, gotten remarried, had a son. They moved to the island of Arrow, a little Baltic island of. As of a few years ago, only 6,000 people where she lives to this day and kind of enjoys being up there on her own. And then in the 2000s, her publisher is like, pulping her overstock because nobody's buying her books anymore. She's not really putting out that much. And then she buys the rights back to her work in 2011, sets up her own publishing house. And she says she had the idea for this book all the way back in 1987.

[Andrew]

That's interesting because it does, as some people in our discord pointed out. Patreon.com overdue pod this book is pretty pandemic coded. And that's around when it came out originally.

[Craig]

Yes, Originally published in 2020. Got that in one. And yeah. And she kind of talks about the main character of this novel. Is it Tara something?

[Andrew]

Tara or Tara? You can decide how you want to pronounce that name. Just in general, I'm going to say Tara Selter.

[Craig]

Tara Seltzer. She talks about Tara like she's this. Just this person she's been living with for decades and then like, finally figured out how to put her down on paper. I believe the character is also. Is not Danish. Right. Andrew is like British and French or something. It's maybe it's not even clear.

[Andrew]

Who knows, like, living in France.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Sterling K. Brown]

I believe.

[Andrew]

I believe there's not like, ultra important what the. What her nationality is. But from.

[Craig]

From Bala's perspective, she. Whenever she's asked about the translation, she goes down a winding answer of saying, well, I'm already sort of translating because this character isn't Danish and I'm trying to capture her voice. And so she does remark on Barbara Haviland as kind of like shaping a little bit of who the character is, because she is, like, is a Scottish translator, I believe, working in English, who primarily does Scandinavian, you know, Danish, Norwegian stuff, and only did kind of came out of retirement to do this book.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

Which may partially explain why she stopped after book two. There are other translators for those books. They are.

[Andrew]

Do folks have opinions on who the translators are? Has there been one who took over the mantle, or is it kind of been a revolving door?

[Craig]

No, a new pair of them. So Sophia Hersey Smith and Jennifer Russell Took over after book three. And they've done three, four and five so far.

[Andrew]

All right.

[Craig]

And Bala says in an interview with Pen on Pen Transmissions that she likes that they are bringing kind of. Apparently in the later books we meet more characters.

[Andrew]

And so that is my extremely loose understanding. I've not. Just in case I want to read more of these, I have not looked at a lot of plot stuff. I sort of have a vague idea of the shape of what book two is.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

But yes, Bala has talked about liking how those two translators bring additional voices kind of into the fold.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

Asked about the like buzz around this book, Bala said, somebody said to me all of New York is talking about this book, but in a way it's so far away that I don't have to worry about it. Everything here is the same.

[Andrew]

She really seems like she doesn't. She's happy that people like it, but she doesn't want to be bothered by it.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

I think is the vibe is the vibe that I'm getting, which is super relatable, honestly. Like, I would love to know that people appreciate my work and not to have it affect my day to day life even one little bit.

[Craig]

There's some good interviews and stuff on the Booker Prizes website that you can go read. There's an interview with both Bala and Hovland. Bala says, my book is just another time loop story. A woman Teraselter or Tara Seltzer is trapped in 18 November. In a way, I didn't want to tell this story. I got the idea in 1987. It sprang from some reflections about time after writing my first book, mixed with what I was reading at the time. But the more I thought about it, the more foolish the idea seemed to me. Even more so. After the Hollywood comedy Groundhog Day came out, I tried to get rid of the idea, but it kept coming back. And so in the end I realized the only way out was to write it. The idea generated so much material that I just wanted to explore it. And it is worth noting that it is a planned heptology.

[Andrew]

Hep. Hep is how many?

[Craig]

Seven.

[Andrew]

Seven. Seven. Okay.

[Craig]

Get hep.

[Sterling K. Brown]

Hep.

[Andrew]

Cats.

[Craig]

She said that she likes Groundhog Day because it helped her see the roads she did not want to take.

[Andrew]

I do feel like we need to refer to it as the Hollywood comedy Groundhog Day.

[Craig]

Hollywood.

[Andrew]

Every time we talk about just like character actress Margot Martindale. It's the holiday. It's the Hollywood comedy Groundhog Day.

[Chris Sullivan]

Who.

[Craig]

What's the. The director of Parasite Bong Joon Ho, I think he's. He's the one who referred to the Oscars as a local film festival. That's similar energy. Hovland said, working on this, you know, it was her. She first worked on According to the Law. Bala wanted her to do the. The translation for this. It took about eight months to do the first book. Working in stages. I thought this just process. We like translators here on the show, Andrew.

[Andrew]

We do love translators.

[Craig]

And so I haven't heard about a process like this before.

[Andrew]

Even. Even when they're woke. Even when they're woke translators.

[Craig]

They're woke translators who want to see Bloodlust in there in their epic poems, said that she would take 20 to 30 pages of this book and start working on them at a time and then like bring those 20 or 30 pages up to a standard of, you know, translation for herself, then do a few more sections and then do a big pass on like four or five sections at a time and then make them all one coherent draft, which is kind of an interesting way to do it, which I thought was kind of neat. And then just why there is this is Havin saying why she thinks there might be appeal for a book like this or just generally why are English language audiences more interested in translated works these days? She says. I'm not sure I'm qualified to comment on this, but one explanation might be that these days English speaking readers have become more used to through streaming, watching foreign series and films with subtitles, and have become more aware of and open to the idea of literature and translation. And of course there was the Nordic noir wave of the 90s and since which several translator colleagues have contributed. So I think that's fair, I think,

[Andrew]

you know, catching that dragon tattoo wave.

[Craig]

Yes. And. And just. Oh, we can watch an interesting crime procedural from Spain on Netflix. Or we could. Anyway, I don't know what's good now, but that's kind of what I have on where this book came from. I recommend that Bala profile in the Times and there's a couple good interviews with her out there. She seems like a cool lady.

[Andrew]

Yeah, as long as we don't bug her.

[Craig]

Yeah, as long we don't just like

[Andrew]

leave her alone, start bothering her. It seems fine.

[Craig]

Yeah, you can find her on Zoom, I guess, you know, don't go. Don't go.

[Andrew]

Or don't. Like don't don't.

[Craig]

Or just don't. Or just don't, you know. Anyway, I look forward to finding out what this loop is like, Andrew, but first we got to loop through some ads and then we'll be back.

[Andrew]

All right.

[Chris Sullivan]

Hi, I'm Beck Bennett.

[Sterling K. Brown]

I thought I was Beck Bennett.

[Chris Sullivan]

No, no, no, no.

[Sterling K. Brown]

Kyle Mooney.

[Chris Sullivan]

Yeah, sorry about that. Exactly. No, all good. All good.

[Sterling K. Brown]

Thanks, buddy.

[Chris Sullivan]

Yeah. And we host the show what's our podcast here on Headgum.

[Sterling K. Brown]

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[Chris Sullivan]

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[Sterling K. Brown]

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[Chris Sullivan]

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[Sterling K. Brown]

do I need to go to, like, do I need another type of website to, like, find the right pictures or like, another type of website to upload?

[Chris Sullivan]

You know, it's all in one place.

[Sterling K. Brown]

The video or the audio or like. No, I want.

[Andrew]

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[Sterling K. Brown]

Make it easy on me, please.

[Chris Sullivan]

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[Sterling K. Brown]

Oh, let's come up with a domain right now. Let's see. I wonder if it exists.

[Chris Sullivan]

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[Andrew]

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[Chris Sullivan]

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[Craig]

Hey, everybody. Welcome to Overdue. It's a podcast about the books you've been meaning to read. My name is Craig.

[Andrew]

My name is Andrew. Just want to cut right to the chase.

[Craig]

Oh, yeah. Let's just start the episode.

[Sterling K. Brown]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Because every week here, every week, one of us reads a book that we've never read before and we tell the other person about it and we tell you about it, and we have a good time. And this week I read book one in the on the calculation of Volume series by Salve Bala.

[Craig]

Great. She seems really interesting. Award winning Nordic writer. We got.

[Andrew]

I don't know anything about her.

[Craig]

I read the Book Neither.

[Andrew]

Like, I didn't. But you did the research.

[Chris Sullivan]

Yeah.

[Craig]

I mean, do you want me to go into it or do you want me.

[Andrew]

Yeah, could you just tell me about.

[Craig]

Yeah. She was born in 1962 in Bovrome Sunderland, and she went to the forefather Skolen, and she wrote a book about a lying bird.

[Andrew]

What is Forefather? What does Forefather Skolin mean? It sounds like it means school for dads. School for father.

[Craig]

I think it's just called the writing school. Forefather is the writing of the. It is the author. It is like the author school.

[Andrew]

Oh, author school.

[Craig]

Yeah. Interesting.

[Andrew]

Father of words.

[Craig]

Yeah. So tell me about the words.

[Andrew]

Obviously, was it. That was a goof that we just did, because this is a time loop book. I. We.

[Craig]

Everybody, welcome to Overdue.

[Andrew]

We. We accidentally assigned ourselves a bunch of ones in a row that gave us trouble for, like, pretty much every reason under the sun.

[Craig]

Yeah. Not trouble, just like, work. It's our job.

[Andrew]

They were work. This is our part time job to read book. To be book idiots.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And it's really hard for me to be the second dumbest person on this book podcast all the time.

[Craig]

Wow. Wow. Who else is here right off screen? Who are you talking about? You for fodder. Skolin. What are you saying over here? Hey, everybody, welcome. Overdue.

[Andrew]

I tickled myself with that one.

[Craig]

I know you did. You always love to. You love it when you get a clean pot shot.

[Andrew]

So I wanted. I wanted to find a book that was, like, short in length and also had the hook that classically Andrew hook. And so, of course, what if somebody had to repeat some section of their lives over and over and over and over again?

[Craig]

Yeah. This goes back. Loops back all the way through our catalog.

[Andrew]

Loops back to at least to replay. Right.

[Craig]

Which is the 60s, I think. Yeah.

[Andrew]

I want to say replay is 51, because I think that one came out right after 50 Shades. The first 50 Shades. And it was another. It was, in a way, another one. You are correct for reading a difficult book.

[Craig]

It is 51. Yeah. You're like, what if I could just read a time loop book after reading 50 Shades. Yeah. Okay.

[Andrew]

But I mean, you know, I've always. I've always loved the Hollywood comedy Groundhog Day. I think you have, too.

[Craig]

Yes, I have. Ned Ryerson's like family to me.

[Andrew]

And it's Ned the Head Ryerson.

[Craig]

It's him.

[Mandy Moore]

Okay.

[Andrew]

But yeah, so I have all. And, you know, I want. I'm a Star Trek person from way back.

[Craig]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Sterling K. Brown]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew]

And over and over again. And yeah, I like, because you get to. I like a time loop story because you get the narrative that you'll get from reading a story, and then also you get to examine what choices the author made when constructing their time loop narrative.

[Craig]

You. Yeah, well, it's fun to me, and I feel like a lot of the ones that we've read for the show, they. I don't think we've read too many that are also doing a sci Fi thing. Like a. Like a. Like a Sci Fi world thing. Usually they are like a time loop story here on some version of planet Earth we've read.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I mean, like, Ministry of Time has sort of a voluntary time machine

[Craig]

element to it, but that wasn't like another planet.

[Andrew]

No, it wasn't. It wasn't another planet. It was a planet of Earth.

[Craig]

Yeah, but the Hollywood comedy Crowdhawk Day

[Andrew]

on the planet of Earth, Henry at camp made. I like the camp that we have him in because they always do a lot of cool activities. Like, the very first day he went, he got draped in a. Draped in a yellow snake.

[Craig]

Like a wrestler.

[Mandy Moore]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

But the other day he made. They made little planets out of ping pong balls and put, like, tea lights in them. So they lit up and they only had three balls per kid. So they didn't make all the plans. They just picked the planets they wanted. And Henry, as he often does, called Earth our home planet when he told me about it.

[Craig]

It's our home planet.

[Andrew]

This is Uranus and this is Mars, and this is our home planet, Earth. And he always says it like we're on third rock from the sun, pretending to be people.

[Craig]

Simon has taken to referring to things or people as the blank of the continent. The greatest person on the continent. I think he just learned what continents are.

[Andrew]

That's grandiose.

[Craig]

Yeah, it's very grandiose.

[Andrew]

Anywho, Henry's learning a lot of words from Star Fox, like, well, tenacious and abandoned.

[Craig]

And that Andros made mistakes.

[Andrew]

Oh, and I, Andros made Dr. Andrus made mistakes. And then I also had to pause the game and point to my watch and explain to him what people were talking about when they said that somebody was on my 6.

[Craig]

Oh, sure.

[Andrew]

Yeah. So he's learning a lot of stuff.

[Craig]

Yeah. That's great.

[Andrew]

What were you talking. We're talking about this.

[Craig]

Welcome to Overdue. It's a podcast about the books you've been meaning to read.

[Andrew]

I like a time loop book. There are people in the patreon discord. Patreon.com overdue pod who? People seem to be struggling with this one a little bit. Like, just kind of the predominant vibe was I kept waiting for something to happen, and it didn't. Or it seemed like a very pandemic coded, very like claustrophobic, isolated little book. And I do think. I mean, we can talk about the protagonist's behavior and whether it maps to anything that you or I would do if we realize that.

[Craig]

Oh, sure, that's interesting.

[Andrew]

Exact circumstances. But I think that the wrinkles of the time loop in here are interesting. And so I was like, I don't know, man. I basically agree with you that not a lot happens in a traditional sense, like, narratively. But I'm getting what I can.

[Craig]

It's not often that you come here to defend a book where nothing happens.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I don't know.

[Craig]

She said in one interview. And this might be a good way to start. In loop stories like these, typically there's a main character who's an. I don't know. I don't know if I'm allowed to say this. The British version of a hole. Can I say this?

[Andrew]

I don't know.

[Craig]

Arsehole. Am I allowed to say that?

[Andrew]

Yeah. I mean, it's American podcast, so it doesn't count.

[Craig]

You're right. That's how it works.

[Andrew]

You can also say that. You can also say the C word.

[Craig]

No, there's a main character who's an arsehole, but who has to go through all these. Set all these things to be a better person, and then they come out of their loop. I felt that it wasn't the act of getting out of the loop that was interesting. What was interesting to me was the idea of stripping off what you have around you of being in the loop. Tell me more about the loop and who's in it. Andrew.

[Andrew]

Yeah, that is very much what the book does because it's all about sort of the interiority of being in the loop.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

So our protagonist's name is Tara selter. It is the 18th of November. Every night when I lay down to sleep in the bed in the guest room is the 18th of November. And every morning when I wake up, it is the 18th of November. I no longer expect to wake up to the 19th of November, and I no longer remember the 17th of November as if it were yesterday.

[Craig]

How long has it been this been going on? This is the beginning of the book.

[Andrew]

So you were pick. You're picking up each. Each chapter is numbered by the day that it is. Like the. The. The 18th of November. That it is. So you're picking up the 120s. I think the first chapter is 121. And so the format of the book is. Hey, here like three, four months in, I decided to start writing down my thoughts. And it's not quite a. Like, I bet you're wondering how I got into this. But that is the, that is the shape, that is the narrative shape that it takes is like, hey, I just decided to start writing this down. It seems like the paper stays.

[Craig]

Oh, that's, that's a. Oh, I hadn't thought about that.

[Andrew]

Yeah, it seems like the paper stays with me. So I'm gonna write down and I'm gonna go back to. And write down everything that I remember about my first 18th of November. And then she just. And then you're just with. So she catches over the first bit of the book. She catches up to where she was. And then you watch her sort of go through different phases of being in the 18th of November by herself.

[Craig]

So she does like a quick download of like what it was like to live through 100 days of this. But really not like beat by beat.

[Andrew]

Not, not beat by beat. Like you, you get a lot of, for lack of a better word, like sort of movements in this book. Like phases.

[Craig]

Yeah, sure.

[Andrew]

Book. So yeah, as, as we open up, we sort of learn through context clues that Tara is in her own home, but she is living in the guest room. And she is, she is organizing her day around her husband's pre planned activities, which she is of course memorized along with like other movement outside the door and like how the weather is and like when birds chirp and that kind of thing.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

She is, you know when he is like in the shower or making noise or something is when she like moves around when he goes out for a walk, is when she comes out and eats stuff. But she has carefully orchestrated her life so that it does not intersect with his life, but she still is living in her house in like a familiar environment.

[Craig]

Is that because she doesn't want to engage in the loop or because she didn't want to engage with him or both.

[Andrew]

So that, so then we, then we go back. Oh, the selters run a. One of the, one of those businesses. And we have known people who have engaged in this work. One of those businesses where the whole thing is like you go to like used bookstores and you buy certain editions of certain books and then you flip them and resell them to somebody else.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Weird rare book collectors, okay? This is their business, this is what they do together.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

And she is gone on sort of a business trip to Paris to pick up some books and do. And just like, like attend a conference and just like do work stuff. Like she's, she's on a two day work trip to Paris or maybe three day, like the 17th is a travel day, then the 18th is all like working and the 19th, I think. I don't, I don't know what it's not. You never find out what she really planned to do on like the 20th of November, because the day is always so distant to her that she stops even thinking about it as a thing that could exist.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

So you find that she, you know, she went, she went through a day. She bought some books that some clients wanted. She had talked to her husband Thomas on the phone and she went to see a, like a, like an old friend sort of acquaintance sort of guy, I think, think like college friend you haven't seen in a long time.

[Craig]

Does she have, did she have a crush on him?

[Andrew]

It's not relevant. Like it never gets mentioned.

[Craig]

It's not relevant.

[Andrew]

But like he has a new girlfriend and they are, you know, their business is doing well and they are sitting in the back room of like the shop that, that this guy and his girlfriend sort of run together and having a, having a drink and they've got like an old heater. Do you ever have a, like a kerosene heater or like a space heater or some. Something in your house when you're a kid?

[Craig]

I've had space heaters, but not ones that were powered by anything other than electricity.

[Andrew]

We had a kerosene heater. I don't know if that was like, I don't know. I don't know why that was.

[Craig]

We had kerosene lamps when I was a kid. Like I have a very distinct memory of power outages where some kerosene lamps got lit up and it was like I was in a castle, but it was just my house.

[Andrew]

And she, she like touches this heater without thinking about it. Gets this big burn on her hand and then she goes back to her room and goes to sleep. And then she wakes up the next day and she starts to go about her day, but she is seeing some like, it's, it's like ATM stuff. Like at first, like it says stuff, says that it's the 18th of November

[Craig]

and she's like, that's wrong.

[Andrew]

She's in the cafe eating and some guy like drops a slice of bread in a way where she, like, she does not have a. She doesn't have a loop like Bill Murray in the Hollywood comedy Groundhog Day.

[Craig]

Beep, beep, beep.

[Andrew]

Where she. Where she's like, oh, what a. What a. What weird deja vu I'm having. Like, what a weird dream this must be. Let me. Let me go through a version of the day I did in the first place where it's just like, I guess, like, okay, I'll do this.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

She pretty instantly realizes that she is repeating the 18th of November pretty quick because of, like, the specific way that this guy drops this slice of bread. Okay, Remember when we saw that ice cream? I know.

[Craig]

Think about that man who ate that ice cream.

[Andrew]

We both think about it.

[Craig]

I know, but I think about. No, here's the thing. Here's the nuanced line.

[Andrew]

All right?

[Craig]

I think about you thinking about that man eating ice cream all the time.

[Andrew]

I think about them. I think about the man eating ice cream directly. I have. There are no hops between the man eating the ice cream.

[Craig]

I. But when I think about the ice cream, I think about your face also. Not the ice cream going in your face, Just the face you were making watching that man eat ice cream. I was never the time loop. If I saw you see that man eat ice cream.

[Andrew]

I never seen a man make love to an ice cream with his mouth before. But if. But the point being, if I was just. If I was in a nondescript cafe where it's. It could be, it looks the same every day no matter what, but a guy was in there, and he was eating ice cream cone like that. And then I saw it again another day, I'd be like, whoa, I must be repeating time. Do you get from the pros, there's no way that a man could eat an ice cream cone like that two times.

[Craig]

Do you get from the pros, like, what this man did to that bread that she really just dropped it. He just, like, dropped the bread.

[Andrew]

He just, like, dropped a bread and picked it up in a way that was really memorable. Yeah, it was really memorable. She remembered it.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

And she does. She does sort of go through the emotions of the. Of the day. She goes back and picks up the books that she's supposed to have picked up. She picks up, like, an old Roman coin, a Cistercius for her, for Thomas. What a gift. She calls him on the phone, and I think, like, right from the get, she's like, hey, I think I've repeated the 18th of November. And he always he is always convinced by her, like, pretty early when she. When she tells him in these. In these loops. But she. She goes to bed, she has, like, books under her pillow. She wakes up. Like, the books under her pillow are still there, but some other. Some other things have reverted. And, oh, she finds out that she's in the 18th of November again. And so she decides. She decides to go home. She goes home on the train. And so the interesting thing about this time loop is that. And the other thing that we know is that she knows that the 1st 18th of November was not some kind of weird dream or something because she still has a burner on her hand from that heater that she.

[Mandy Moore]

Oh.

[Andrew]

And so she is living through the 18th of November over and over again, but she herself is still. Like, her hair is still growing. Her, like, the heater wound is, like, healing, healing. Some things stay with her. It's not like there are no clearly defined rules for. For what does and doesn't. But, like, physical proximity seems to help.

[Craig]

Okay?

[Andrew]

Food and food. And, like, consumable stuff that she personally eats disappears. So she gets to a point later in the loop where she has to start, like, shopping at different grocery stores because, like, all the chocolate and bread are gone from the normal.

[Craig]

Oh, no.

[Andrew]

Yeah. And it doesn't. It's weird because you would think that that would affect other people's lives. They would just, like, they would know that there was no bread or whatever, and that would. Would change the day, and maybe it does, but we're not interested in it.

[Craig]

We're not privy to that or whatever.

[Andrew]

We're not interested in, like, the guy who goes to the grocery store and is like, oh, hey, there's no bread here. I'm gonna go to another grocery store. And a butterfly flaps its wings and.

[Craig]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew]

And then Hitler is never born or whatever.

[Craig]

Yeah, sure.

[Chris Sullivan]

Huh.

[Andrew]

But yeah, that's. That's the. That is the kind of time loop is like, she. She is persistent, okay?

[Craig]

But she can move around. Like, she doesn't.

[Andrew]

If she sleeps, she can move around like, she. And once she goes home, she starts waking up at home.

[Craig]

Okay, okay.

[Andrew]

Like, she does. She does not wake up to. To. I've got you, babe.

[Craig]

It's not a time space over and over again.

[Andrew]

No, it's just a time loop where she's in the 18th of November.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Over and over again. And I. So in the Hollywood comedy Groundhog Day, when Bill Murray realizes he's trapped, he goes through a lot of different phases of. Of, like, doing stuff too. And One of the phases is like, I'm gonna try so, so hard to beat this by getting out of the town of Punxsutawney somehow and not getting snowed in.

[Craig]

Yeah. What is the. Does she push any limits?

[Andrew]

She is like. She's not really doing that. She is.

[Craig]

She.

[Andrew]

So the first. The first part of the loop that we. That we learn about through this diary is her going home. And then every day she wakes up and she tells her husband Thomas, and she, you know, gives him a couple examples of things that are gonna happen that, like, convince him that she's actually stuck in a time loop. And then they have. The first phase is. I think she describes it as kind of like a fog where she can. She can wake up in the morning and be like, for just a minute, I can pretend like I'm just waking up on any.

[Craig]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew]

And I'm gonna wake. I'm going to wake up next to my husband, and we're gonna go through the thing, and he's always gonna, like, give me the same little look, and then I'm always gonna convince him. And then there's a later part of that phase where they start kind of. They start, like, going through all the evidence. Like, oh, you know, there's the coin that I bought you around for a couple days, but then disappeared. But the books are still around.

[Craig]

But food.

[Andrew]

Some food is still not around. Like, they. They do try, I think, to identify rules. And, you know, in. In identifying rules, one presumes they hope to, like, break what the. The cycle is. But she is weirdly. I don't want to say resigned, but, like, sort of inert. Like, just. Just like kind of. Kind of, kind of just letting it happen to her until. Until very late in the book.

[Craig]

Yeah, that makes.

[Andrew]

But. But it's. But it goes. It goes hand in hand with, like, the. Oh, I noticed the bread, and now I'm in a time loop thing. It's all just. It's all very matter of fact.

[Craig]

Yeah. So what does that create space for. For the book to be about if it's not about somebody trying to break out of a time loop?

[Andrew]

It's about her existing in the time loop, really. Like, you know, there's the fog period, then there's the trying to figure it out period. And then you get to three or four months in, and she just. She starts to feel like, I am. You know, I am, too. I can't. I can't get back that feeling of, oh, this could be any day. Oh, I'm just gonna Enjoy, like, spending a day with my husband, just, like, doing stuff that I know doesn't matter, and then I'll wake up again on the 18th of November. Like, I. I can't do that anymore. And there are. There are getting to be just too many 18ths of November between me and him. And so I'm just going to quietly pick up my stuff and go. And she. Like, you do get a couple of nights where they, like, try to stay up all night, and there's always, like, a moment where he seems like he, like, falls asleep for a second, and then he wakes up and he doesn't remember anything.

[Craig]

Oh, but she stays awake.

[Andrew]

But she. Yeah. Or something.

[Mandy Moore]

And.

[Andrew]

Well, yes. And she's still in the same place because that's how the time loop is, like, working for.

[Craig]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Andrew]

But, yeah, she. She's not, like, aggressive. I. I never get the sense that she's aggressively like a. Like a rat in a cage trying to escape.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

No, no, that stuff, it's. It's always very, like, incidental when she pushes up against a boundary like that. Yeah. So she. She's in the guest room, and then she is in the guest room for a while, and then she starts to realize that, like, they're. They're living in a house that I think Thomas's father or grandfather died and left them. And there's a garden that he maintained that he left extensive instructions on how to maintain. And so they still kind of do it out of. Out of, like, respect for him. And she noticed, like, every day Thomas goes and grabs a leek out of the garden and he makes soup out of it. And then every day the leek is back.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

And one day she goes and she grabs a leek from the garden. And then the next day, she realizes, oh, hey, that leak that I took is still gone.

[Craig]

Huh?

[Andrew]

And then she start. And this is, I think, where the name of the book comes from, which is another question that came up in the. In the Patreon discord. Patreon.com overdupod sure. Where people are, like, I'm not. I don't really know what the manipulation of volume is about.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

Like, people having read it. Did not. Did not. Did not know what the name of the book is. I think it's this part because she starts talking about feeling like a. Like a monster. Like, this is another distinct phase of the book. Like, I am a. I'm a monster who is, like, getting too big for this little room that I'm sitting in all the time. And My, I am like slowly consuming the earth because things that I eat are persistent.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And, and yeah, she's, she's just feeling like she takes up a lot of space and then she has a phase where she goes and she gets a telescope and she is like, I, I, I, money, the money in her bank account comes back every day. So she's like, yeah, I'm just going to go and I'm going to spend a bunch of money on like food that I put in bins under my bed and I'm going to get a decent telescope and I'm gonna just learn about the night sky. And so she does that for a while.

[Craig]

Like, what if I hyper fixate on something? Yeah.

[Andrew]

And she notes that, you know, the, the there's a thing on the telescope that you spin based on the season that it is so like, it helps, you know which version of the night sky that you're looking at. And she's like, yeah, it took a couple cycles for me to get it stuck to fall, but now it doesn't change anymore. Now it's just stuck on, now it's stuck on fall because that's the only chart that I need. Okay. And that makes her feel small for a while, but then she starts to feel like big and monstrous again because she's, I don't know, she, she's just like the only person. Yeah, yeah, she, she, she's feel, she's just feeling, she's feeling away about how the rules of persistence work, I think, in this world. And so at this point she goes to a. Because when she, wait, she wakes up wherever she went, fell asleep. It's just the day that resets. And so she goes to like a realtor's office and it's like, hey, what, what houses can I like go on a tour through? What, what vacant homes can I, can I find where like, no neighbors are gonna see me and like nobody is gonna be in there on the 18th of November other than me just like looking for another place to live basically.

[Craig]

Sure, sure.

[Andrew]

So she, she moves into another house. And that's another distinct phase of the book. And then during this phase, she is not, she's not encountered.

[Craig]

Can she bought, could she. If she bought a house? She doesn't matter if she, I don't,

[Andrew]

I mean, I don't know if she'd still have the deed to the house.

[Craig]

If she sleeps on top of the deed. Maybe she still has the, maybe she

[Andrew]

still has the deed and she just goes to the, the, to city hall every day and it's like, hey, I own this house. Don't ask a lot of questions.

[Craig]

Yeah, weird.

[Andrew]

No. You and I both know that it takes too long to buy a house. Yeah, that's even, even, even in the quickest of circumstances, it takes too long to buy a house, to, to find one, close on it and get the deed all in one single day.

[Craig]

You can't do that in one day.

[Andrew]

You can't do it in one day. But she, she starts to talk about in this phase and you know, there are like sub phases that I'm ignoring, but I'm just like kind of explaining to you what the. What the.

[Chris Sullivan]

How dare you.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I know, right? Welcome to Overdue.

[Craig]

It's a podcast about the books, you mean. My name is Craig.

[Andrew]

My name is Andrew. She starts to think that she feels like as, as you get into like the, the late 200s and the three hundreds of 18ths of November, she starts to wake up and be like, hey, like under. Underneath this day somewhere I feel September.

[Chris Sullivan]

Whoa.

[Andrew]

And she starts to think like, okay, we are getting to the one year mark and if there's anywhere for me to like, if there's any time I'm going to be able to hop off this merry go round, surely I can like, go. Surely. It involves like going back to where I was on the 1st 18th of November and looking at everything and figuring out what subtle thing it was that I did that got me stuck and I'm gonna not do it or do it and I'm gonna get myself unstuck.

[Craig]

So.

[Sterling K. Brown]

And this.

[Craig]

So this sounds like it's pretty late in the book though. Like it's not like what you said, not.

[Chris Sullivan]

Oh yeah,

[Craig]

where at the beginning it's like, how do I get off this thing?

[Andrew]

In the.

[Mandy Moore]

In.

[Andrew]

Yeah. In the beginning it's very matter of fact in the, in the end, she develops a specific plan where she goes back to Paris, goes back to her, her hotel room. She walks into the hotel and the person is just like, oh, hey, hi. Go up to your room. Like she never left.

[Craig]

That's wild. Yeah. Okay.

[Andrew]

Even though it's been to her, it's been almost a year, calendar year since she was there. And she spends a few days just like walking around Paris and looking at everything around the route that she took and just being hyper vigilant and, and feeling like I'll know it when I see it about, okay, that's gonna change her 18th of November. And so she gets, she gets to the one year mark and she has an 18th of November that's that's, that's a little different because she meets this, this friend from the bookstore like before she had on the original day when he's like out running errands. And he shows her this apartment above their shop that they like managed to buy. And it's like a, like a hoarder used to live there and it's just like all full of stuff. And they go back down to the shop and then Tara makes the. Tara, I think is at this point in her isolation becoming a little socially strange. Like, not really knowing, I'm sure. And so she decides, you know what I'm gonna do is they're asking me what's up with me. I'm gonna tell them all about the time loop thing. And she even like shows them the scar on her hand from the heater and like matches it up to their heater. And they clearly do not believe her and think she's being. Being weird.

[Craig]

Yeah, I would bet.

[Andrew]

And like invite her to dinner sometime in that way that people do that makes it clear that absolutely they do not want to have dinner with you sometime. Like, oh, yeah, we'll make plans.

[Craig]

Yeah, sounds great.

[Andrew]

Yeah. And she is kind of shell shocked after that. She's like, something changed. And this feels bad, but I don't know if it's. Is gonna get me out or not. And then she goes to bed and that is the end of the book. As she goes to bed. Oh, like the one year anniversary of her I hadn't. Of her first 18th of November.

[Craig]

I hadn't even considered that. That would be like an interesting marker. What a cool.

[Andrew]

Yeah. And so, yeah, that's, that's how the book kind of makes use of her numbering the days the whole time.

[Craig]

Are you getting. You're not getting every single day?

[Andrew]

No, they're. They're big. They're big gaps, especially in, especially in the middle when she's in the I am a monster phase. Yeah, there's, there's a hint of. I don't know, I just laid in bed today. Like, what's the point of any of this? You get a little bit of that.

[Craig]

Sure, sure.

[Andrew]

You never. But again, you never get from the Hollywood comedy Groundhog Day. You never get the, like, I'm gonna end it all.

[Craig]

Yeah, you never get the, like Murray driving a car into a telephone pole or whatever he does. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

[Andrew]

But yeah, I mean, that's, that's pretty much the book. I don't, I think plot wise, I don't have a ton more to say about It. And they're really not characters.

[Craig]

No. It doesn't sound like it. No.

[Andrew]

Her and her husband Thomas, and this, like, friend of hers and his girlfriend that you meet, like, two or three times.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

There's, like, a guy who, like, runs around a fence. Weird. And she. She sometimes uses him as a way to prove that she's in a time loop to Thomas because, like, look at this guy run. Or look at this guy run, like, past this fence. Specific time.

[Craig]

Okay. Because I do want to, like, open up to just, like, what are the. We've. We've hit some of them, I think. But, like, what are the kind of emotional modes of human experience that this book. I think what people like. The. One of the reasons that this book has gotten acclaim and been just. People are just so interested in it is that, yes, it's a time loop book, but apparently it is also, like, a meditation on love. It is a novel about the human experience that isn't just, like, wouldn't it be weird if you were stuck in a time loop? And I do. There is something poignant about, like, okay, I'm gonna use that stranger over there who I have called fence runner guy or, like, bread man. In the same way that there are, you know, people you don't know who live in your neighborhood or go to the same school as you or whatever it is. And you see them so regularly that you've given them a moniker that maybe if you said it out loud, it would make them feel uncomfortable because it's like, whatever you use, Polka Dot kid or what, you know, whatever thing is in your brain. And that is a very. Like, for her to use that as an anchor feels, you know, a hop skip, but akin to, oh, this is just kind of how I process all the, like, people I don't know in my life that. But I, like, I see them all the time. They're part of my existence, but I'm not connected to them. What else for you is this book doing that you think, like, has warranted this kind of elevated response?

[Andrew]

I think you. You catch. I mean, I haven't talked a ton. I gave you a little bit of the prose, like, right at the top where she realizes that she's stuck in the 18th of November. But there is a lot of just, like, nice contemplative prose in, like, these. In these little, like, short, unadorned, like, rat a tat. A tat sentences. This is why I began to write, because I can hear him in the house. Because time has fallen apart, because I found a ream of paper on the shelf because I'm trying to remember, because the paper remembers. And there may be healing in sentences, she says, or just little, little things like we could not share 18 November. This was a day I had to carry alone talking about. And this is another bit where she's talking later about the phase where she is no longer meeting Thomas in the mornings and explaining everything to him. And she's kind of like following him around a little bit but not not wanting to go up to him because she says, I do not go in and toss 151 days onto the floor in a heap between us. I don't go into that room and try to drag him out of his pattern. I live with the distance. I sit on the bed and read. I know that he will soon come closer again. Why would I toss 151 days onto the floor in a heap when I can have this very short distance? So just talking about how their days are. Have become like this sort of orchestra and like that's a thing that she has for a while and then she loses it. Like it's all. It's all her trying.

[Craig]

Her. She.

[Andrew]

Her journey is like finding little patterns and trying to find meaning in the patterns and then kind of losing them as she repeats them over and over again.

[Chris Sullivan]

Okay.

[Craig]

Yeah, that sounds. Okay, that sounds like like the, the Booker website's like quotidian existential mode. That's what that. Yeah, that's what that is. Just pretty straightforward. Perceptive ruminations they say it has. Right. I know some folks in the Discord. Patreon.com said it was pandemic coded. Did that hit you hard, Andrew? Is that just kind of something you can acknowledge? But it wasn't like I can acknowledge it.

[Andrew]

Like I didn't. It was not jumping out at me until some. Until I read that. That person mention it because it is. It is very isolating and it is very like you just not. You don't even meet. You don't let. To say nothing of a Ned Ryerson. You do not even meet a character like that, like homeless guy who is. Who he's always trying to make not die, but then he dies anyway. In the Hollywood comedy Groundhog Day.

[Craig]

In the Hollywood comedy Groundhog Day. On the planet Earth. Planet of Earth.

[Andrew]

On our home planet of Earth. Yeah.

[Craig]

Yeah. Welcome to Overdue. It's a podcast about the book you need to read. My name is Craig.

[Andrew]

You don't get any additional character. Even when you meet a shopkeeper. Something sometime you usually don't Go back and meet that shopkeep again and explore their interiority.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

And yes, that does feel very pandemicy because I think in a non pandemicy book, there would be a deeper bench of background characters like that. And I think maybe like you said in later volumes, where other characters start to show up, maybe that becomes more of a thing. But in this book, it's very much, very narrowly focused on her and then a couple of people in her immediate circle, and that is it.

[Craig]

It's interesting to think about it as a pandemic book. That's probably been so much of the, like, what folks responses to it have been.

[Andrew]

It's just, where are neighbors.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Where Aside from like, fence running guy.

[Craig]

Yeah. But like, she, you know, she says she first came up with the idea in 87. It was published in 2020. So, like, it's not like she was writing. Was published in February of 2020. So, like, it's not like she's writing it having even lived through an iota of. Yeah, no, the COVID 19 pandemic. But it is obviously, you know, part of what people are experiencing. I was reminded reading about it of Piranesi, the Susanna Clarke book of this kind of, like, person who is obsessed with a task because it is part of their entire existence and they're keeping a journal of their kind of scientific exploration of that task. Piranesi then spends the last third kind of going into a whole bunch of other stuff that this book certainly doesn't. But I was reading about this going like, oh, that's my favorite part of Pyrenees. It was. I was just hanging out with that guy while he, like, explored this weird, magical water castle.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

And I do have, Andrew, some reviews

[Andrew]

of this book on my guitar. So threes are a good reason for you.

[Craig]

That's where they're from. And those are the amount of stars, clips and thoughts said exquisite writing that literally makes you get lost in the story. I listened to this. Oh, no, it's not clips, cups and thoughts. Excuse me. I listened to this in one sitting while working on a crafty project. And the way it ended so abruptly made me go, huh? Emoji. And the fact that there are seven more volumes or six more volumes. Excuse me. Cups and thoughts made me go. And then there's just the question mark for. I think that's an emoji that didn't translate. I don't think.

[Andrew]

Unsupported Unicode.

[Craig]

Yeah, it looks like the unsupported Unicode character. What an intriguing concept. Three exclamation Points.

[Andrew]

You have to read that on your Mac.

[Craig]

I think I'm reading it on my Mac.

[Andrew]

Oh, you're on your Mac.

[Mandy Moore]

Whoa.

[Craig]

Yeah, whoa, whoa.

[Andrew]

But anyway, the clippy emoji, I guess

[Craig]

a very positive three star review.

[Andrew]

I think sometimes people don't understand what the number of stars means.

[Craig]

That's fair.

[Andrew]

And this is true across like Amazon and like restaurant reviews as well. Sometimes people just don't know what three stars means.

[Craig]

I share that one right now because I certainly didn't expect this book to have as. Maybe it's because I'm still like dealing with the fumes of dungeon crawler Carl that like we all are, you know, a book that just kind of is over. And this at least has a. For a planned seven book series. Has like a very concrete. And then you don't know what's on the other side of her going to sleep that day. And you could, you could never about it.

[Andrew]

Yeah, you could. You could never have a. You could just have the stink alone. Totally alone as its own book. And you, the reader, gets to decide whether she gets out or not.

[Craig]

Yeah. What is this person?

[Andrew]

The thing about the holiday comedy Groundhog Day that's just so fun.

[Craig]

The Hollywood. Do you say holiday comedy? It is a holiday.

[Andrew]

The Hollywood comedy Groundhog Day.

[Craig]

Welcome to Overdue.

[Andrew]

Is that whatever cruel and uncaring God put Bill Murray in that timeline loop for 4,000 days or however long it is that he's.

[Craig]

There was one draft where he's supposed to be down there 10,000 years or something, but not the one they were

[Andrew]

like, they were just waiting for him to 100% that day and get with Andy McDowell at the end.

[Craig]

That's what it is. Yes. He has to, he has to prestige. He has to like level up to

[Andrew]

the map and all the achievements. Yeah.

[Craig]

And then he can sleep with Andy McDowell.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Bill Barrel Murray gets to S rank on February 2nd in Punxsutani. And then he gets out.

[Craig]

Endless Book Club said the first 50 pages in the last few pages were captivating, but the main chunk of the book was extremely slow paced and repetitive. The repetition is understandable as that is the main theme of the story. But it fell flat for me. That said, I ordered my second volume. Excuse me, second book. Because I'm curious, despite the slowness of it all, did you find the middle slow at all? I mean, not a long book.

[Andrew]

A little bit like it. Like the. Once you get into the like, I'm a monster, I'm looking up at the sky thing. It's like well, okay, what are we doing? Like, we're not. We're not trying to get out. We're not trying to have, like, a hedonistic, no regrets, like, I can do whatever I want with no consequences thing, which I think is like, a lot of what? Or we. A lot of time loop stuff does that. We're not. I'm not trying to change the world and just, like, see how it goes.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

Not trying to use my knowledge of how the day goes to, like, advantage myself in. In some way. So, like, what are we doing? We're just looking up at the sky, I guess. Okay. Like, I do. I do get it.

[Craig]

Like, I get that because that's. Simultaneously, though, like. And I've had this moment in a book where it usually happens about halfway through. You're like, okay, I'm trying to figure out where you're going.

[Andrew]

And, like, is this. Is this what we're doing? Is there still a destination? Yeah.

[Craig]

And. But everything you also just said is the, like, can I affect the world? Can I not? Should I even try? Oh, wait. That's the philosophical resonance of. On the calculation of volume. If you were, like.

[Andrew]

If you were waiting for her to get to a. Get to the part that most like. And it doesn't matter what the part is. If you. If you're waiting for her to get to a part of a time loop novel that is your favorite part, you're probably not gonna find it in here because she is just sitting around most.

[Craig]

So just read this. So, yeah, just, like, let this book be this book or don't read it.

[Andrew]

But I do maybe read it. I mean, it's not. It's not a long book.

[Craig]

Mm.

[Andrew]

And I can forgive a lot. Don't make me read your one idea, like, three times. Like, when I think about. When I think about American Psycho, right. Where, like, we.

[Craig]

Yeah, there were middle. There was a middle chunk of that book that was like, okay, I get it.

[Andrew]

Well, we. And. And we didn't. We didn't not see what that book was doing.

[Craig]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Andrew]

It just. We didn't need it to do it so many times. And so, yeah, I can. I can put up with more sort of philosophical faffing about, for lack of a better term.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

If you are. If you were just gonna get it, you know, if you're gonna go in and do it and then get out and be done.

[Craig]

All right.

[Andrew]

And I can, you know, and if you enjoyed, like, this, that. This dose of that, maybe you go to book two, and it does sound like maybe later. Volumes in the series start giving. Sorry. Books. Later books in the series start giving people more of what they would expect. Like finding another person in a time loop, which I think is how book two ends, is classic time loop stuff. Like, oh, I found somebody else.

[Craig]

Yep. Somebody else is experiencing this.

[Andrew]

Yes. And now. And now, you know, what do we do? What do we do after that? Do we form. Do we try to find the way out together using common elements? Do we form a secret society of people who are in time loops together and we all. And we all just do it that way? Like, you know, there are other things. There are other narrative avenues that opens up for you.

[Craig]

She has said in the 12025 interview with Penn Transmissions that the ending came with the idea. So people were asking her if she knows how it's gonna end. I haven't thought about the end as separated from the idea. It was there long before I started writing. There are elements that have come along the way, of course. And let's see if I'm right about the end. I really like. That's how she puts it. It's not so likely that it will be very different to what I think it will be. Okay, so cool. See, when it comes out, they've been. They were 20, 20, 20, 20, 20-21, 22, 23.

[Andrew]

The six translations are releases.

[Craig]

These were original releases.

[Andrew]

Original releases, yeah. Because I think not. Not quite all of the ones that are out are translated. Yeah.

[Craig]

I think five of them, most recent, one one through five have been translated and then six has been published and then not translated yet. And then seven has not been published yet.

[Andrew]

So.

[Craig]

But she seems to have written most of it.

[Andrew]

Okay, cool.

[Craig]

And it does. Oh, and I didn't ask it. It takes place in the modern day. All of it. There's smartphones and stuff. Yeah. Okay.

[Andrew]

She, like, leaves her phone under the bed to be not charged pretty quickly because, like, there's something weird. There's just something weird going on about it.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Because it's in a time loop. So. Yeah. I mean, like, functionally, she is doing it without phones because she.

[Craig]

Because she's in a time loop.

[Andrew]

Because she kind of forgets. She intentionally forgets to use her phone, I guess.

[Craig]

Okay. For one interview, for whatever reason, when

[Andrew]

you intentionally forget something, that's called a decision. There's a word for that. When I decide not to do something, it's not the same as intentionally forgetting to do.

[Craig]

I don't know what she means by this. She says she thought about putting it back in the 80s because it didn't work in the 2000s or the 2010s, but then she said it in the 2020s and it's fine. And she says she can't explain why.

[Andrew]

I don't think I can. There's something to like the,

[Chris Sullivan]

I don't

[Andrew]

know, just like the, the even. Even before the pandemic, but especially since the pandemic. Just like the, the distrust of institutions.

[Craig]

What do we do? Yeah, we're all out on our own.

[Andrew]

Yeah, the pervasive bad mood and every, you know, everyone out for themselves. I think that that sort of thing is probably worse in America than it is in most European countries. But like, no, I don't think any country has been immune from, yeah, sort of authority authoritarian, like backsliding and just like a general mood of unease and anger, hunger and isolation. Like, I think that, I think that is what makes it 2020-ish. Is like, it just feels like we're all waiting for something to, to break one way or the other, you know?

[Craig]

Well, and what you were saying about the, like, the, the relationship she's in where she's like, I don't want to drop 150 days that I've experienced that this other person hasn't. The, like the 2000s experience of we're all. Are we all living in different realities? Like, are we even perceiving the same reality? And like, one way that you can explore that in a book is to have somebody literally experience a different reality but not be able to communicate it. So cool.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Well, thanks for telling me about this book, Andrew. I can't wait to hear about it again tomorrow.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Welcome to Overdoits podcast about the books you've been meaning to read. My name is Craig.

[Andrew]

My name is Andrew.

[Craig]

And if you have any thoughts about a book that I'm sure we'll talk about soon on the calculation of volume by Solvaybaya, you can send us an email. Overdupodmail.com hit us up on social media at Overdue Pod. Our theme song is composed daily by Nick Laurengis.

[Andrew]

It's hot and fresh. We light up the sign when we're. When we're making the theme song.

[Craig]

Andrew. If folks want to know more about the show, where do they go?

[Andrew]

Overdue Podcast.com is the Internet website. That's where we have the schedule. The August schedule is a work in progress that will hopefully be done by the time, like 120 listening days of

[Craig]

today to figure it out before we break out of this loop and make a Schedule.

[Andrew]

We also have all the links that Craig mentioned and a link to our patreon patreon.com overdue pod. We've talked about it many times. It's a place where you can discuss the episodes with a. With a community of like minded people and also discuss other things and also participate in our rich Garfield centric culture. And you also get bonus episodes and our newsletter, Dusty Bookshelves. Craig, let's talk about whether your newsletter bit is coming.

[Craig]

It's coming after.

[Andrew]

Okay, good. Dusty Bookshelves and other things. Patreon.com overdue pod Craig, do we know what you're reading next week?

[Craig]

Yeah, I think I will probably be reading. What is it called here? Olive Kittredge by Elizabeth Strout. I think that's what I'm gonna read.

[Andrew]

Okay, cool.

[Craig]

So tune in for that.

[Andrew]

All right. Okay, everybody, thank you for listening to our podcast. As always, welcome to Overdue this podcast about the books you've been meaning to read. My name is Craig.

[Craig]

My name is Andrew.

[Andrew]

I just always think of the tagline as being one long unbroken thought.

[Craig]

Yeah. Sort of how it is.

[Andrew]

And my name is Craig is part of it. We should change our website to be like, this is about the books you've been meaning to read. My name is Craig.

[Craig]

My name is Craig.

[Andrew]

Updates Mondays.

[Craig]

It's one word. How to baby eats a boy style.

[Andrew]

All right, until we talk to you next week or tomorrow or today again, please try to be happy. That was a Headgum podcast.

[Mandy Moore]

Hi, I am Mandy Moore.

[Andrew]

Sterling K. Brown.

[Craig]

And I'm Chris Sullivan. And we host the podcast that was us now on Headgum.

[Mandy Moore]

Each episode we're gonna go into a deep dive from our show. This is us.

[Andrew]

That's right.

[Mandy Moore]

We're gonna go episode by episode. We're also gonna pepper in episodes with different guest stars and writers and casting directors.

[Craig]

Are we gonna cry? Yes, a little bit. Are we gonna laugh a lot. A whole lot.

[Andrew]

That's what I'm hoping, man. Listen to that was us on your favorite podcast app. Or watch full video episodes on YouTube or Spotify. New episodes every Tuesday.