Do you know the 1993 film Groundhog Day, in which Bill Murray plays a weatherman caught in a time loop? He keeps waking up on February 2, every morning, until he finally lives the day in such a spectacular manner that he is rewarded (seemingly) by waking up on February 3. Decades later, a Danish author started publishing a book series depicting a Groundhog Day time loop. The thing is, she thought up the concept before the scriptwriter of Groundhog Day did!

The Groundhog Day Time Loop vs. Solvej Balle’s Idea for a Time Loop

According to the Guardian, author Solvej Balle “decided on the title in 1989, though she didn’t start writing for another 10 years and the first volume wasn’t published in Danish for another 20. Watching someone turn her idea into a box-office hit in the meantime was a relief rather than a blow: ‘I thought, “Oh, that’s nice, somebody’s helped me to do some research and gone in a direction I wasn’t going to go anyway.”’”

What a lovely expression of the value of art. Who cares if someone had the same idea as you and preempted you in creating art with it? You’re going to turn the idea into something unique and original anyway, something no one else but you could do.

Also lovely? That Balle took her time. She had the idea of creating something, moved to a small island in Denmark, and worked on her project for years and years: as long as it took to make it right.

A Groundhog Day Time Loop with a Psychologically Interesting Protagonist

On the Calculation of Volume, Book I, by Solvej Balle, is something special, a harrowing, constricted world to be savored. It has a Groundhog Day time loop, but nothing else about it is similar to the movie.

The narrator is on a business trip in Paris when she notices that yesterday is occurring again, today. This keeps happening. She tells her husband, and his reaction surprises me as a reader. She tries to understand what’s going on: What is the nature of this time loop she is caught in? What are the rules of this broken universe, and how might she escape? She makes interesting decisions and is a thoughtful, graceful protagonist, one I loved spending time with.

Here is an example of the philosophical musings of the protagonist:

“The unthinkable is something we carry with us always. It has already happened: we are improbable, we have emerged from a cloud of unbelievable coincidences. Anyone would think that this knowledge would equip us in some small way to face the improbable. But the opposite appears to be the case. We have grown accustomed to living with that knowledge without feeling dizzy every morning, and instead of moving around warily and tentatively, in constant amazement, we behave as if nothing has happened, take the strangeness of it all for granted and get dizzy if life shows itself as it truly is: improbable, unpredictable, remarkable.”

A Literary Crossover Version of the Groundhog Day Time Loop

This is a literary-speculative fiction crossover: the perfect mix of modern psychological drama with a fantasy / sci-fi twist. I absolutely loved it and am dying to find out what happens next. (This is a strange thing to be yearning for in a story in which the same thing keeps happening over and over. Except it doesn’t, not really. Things change in the novel. Time passes, even as it stays the same.)

On the Calculation of Volume is a septet, meaning that it is seven books long. Balle has published the first five books in Danish and is at work on the last two. The first four books have been translated into English. Book I was on the longlist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature and on the shortlist for the International Booker Prize.

You’ll Love This Novel with a Groundhog Day Time Loop

I’ve been doing some internet research to write this blog post, but I’m going to stop now, because I’m afraid I will encounter a spoiler. I’ve only read book I, and I’ve requested book II from the library. Don’t tell me what happens next! I can’t wait to read more.

Oh, and by the way, book I is extremely short. And the sentences are a normal length. There are seven books, but this isn’t Proust!

What would you do if you kept waking up on the same day, trapped in a Groundhog Day time loop? Who, if anyone, would you tell?

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