On the Calculation of Volume III - Solvej Balle
A review of Solvej Balle’s third volume, where isolation gives way to shared living and the loop becomes communal.
Translated by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell | 208 pages · Paperback · Faber & Faber, 2025
The Loop Makes Room
Vol III changes the temperature of the series.
The first two volumes were solitary books. They narrowed the world to repetition, accounting, and fatigue. Time stalled, and meaning thinned. Book III shifts that condition by introducing others.
Rather than refining the same condition again, this volume alters it. Isolation gives way to shared living, and the series takes on a different shape without abandoning its discipline. Once the loop is shared, the problem changes form. What follows is not plot escalation but adjustment. People learn one another’s habits. Friction appears. Routines settle. Space and responsibility are negotiated. The day becomes something lived together rather than endured alone.
The ethical focus shifts with it. The aim is no longer repair or escape, but harm reduction. Attention turns to the present: preventing accidents, organising care, making the day workable. These actions remain small and practical. Their force lies in repetition and accumulation.
Nothing is resolved. Time does not restart. No explanation arrives. Yet the atmosphere lightens. Suffering is no longer borne alone. The burden moves from isolation to coexistence.
Vol. III does not undo what came before. It answers it. The shift is quiet, structural, and sustained.