If you Google the phrase “Danish Groundhog Day,” you will almost certainly be directed to the five-part novel series On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle, the first three installments of which have been translated into English one at a time since 2024. The comparison to Bill Murray’s iconic ’90s comedy is apt but limited. Balle’s protagonist Tara Selter does relive the same day repeatedly, in her case the eighteenth of November. Like Murray’s character Phil, Tara’s day initially seems to be an exact repeat of the day before, her awareness of the situation triggered by seeing yesterday’s date on the papers in the hotel where she is staying, followed by the same hotel guest in the restaurant dropping the same piece of toast to the floor. But unlike Phil’s situation, the need to learn a clear moral lesson does not seem to be the reason Tara is stuck in time. Nor is Balle merely riffing off the movie’s idea; she first came up with hers more than thirty years ago, before Groundhog Day was released. Further, where the film is comedic and redemptive, Balle’s novels so far are slow and meditative, more inclined toward reflections on physics and history than keeping up the narrative pace.

Yet there is, reassuringly, a narrative. While it may be difficult to imagine how so many novels can be written about a single day on endless repeat (Balle intends to write two more, making the series a septology), the pace is brisker and more varied than you’d expect. As the series unfolds, Balle approaches her central conceit from a seemingly limitless number of angles. Tara often responds to her situation like a detective or an investigative journalist, examining the variety of combinations that her day can create. She observes which parts of her day reset—which people she sees at the same locations at the same times— and which do not. Some objects that she acquires in a day can remain with her if she sleeps with them. An antiquarian book dealer, Tara often finds Roman artifacts or beautiful art folios that she wants to bring back home, some of which continue with her into the next eighteenth of November, while some disappear and return to their point of origin. Food sources appear to deplete; Tara notices the items that she often purchases from grocery stories start to disappear from the aisles, and she must go further afield to less frequented shops in smaller villages to avoid becoming a “monster” starving the world of its food. The result of Balle’s approach is constant variety, even within seemingly endless repetition. Whenever Tara’s situation risks becoming stale, Balle reveals a new direction in the narrative, a new implication in the scenario she has constructed, and the momentum continues.

Indeed, Tara’s response to her situation takes on a new dynamic with each novel. Coming unstuck in time at first while in France purchasing antique books for the shop that she runs with her husband Thomas, she begins by investigating the reason why her November 18 keeps repeating, eventually returning home to Thomas to resume the same timeline as him. When that fails, Tara seeks other options, returning to France to the scene of the first rupture in time one year later in the hope of hopping back onto the moving year as the next one ticks over. When that also fails, she tries travelling in search of seasons within her ever-repeating November day, seeking out places where the climate feels for her like the winter, spring, and summer of her home. The second part finishes where the third—and latest to come out in English—begins: with Tara’s discovery of a new detail that dramatically changes how she engages with her November 18.