What do you do if you're stuck in a time loop?

I'm sure Solvej Balle's novel On the Calculation of Volume 1 (smoothly translated from Danish by Barbara J. Holland) is not the first and will not be the last to play with Groundhog Day's premise—that a character is stuck in time and endlessly repeats the same day over and over and over. Because I've heard it before, I almost did not start the book even though it was a Booker prize-winner. That would have been my loss.

Tara Selter and her husband Thomas run an antique book business out of their two-story stone cottage on the outskirts of the fictional Clairon-sous-Bois in northern France. On the 17th of November she goes to a Bordeaux auction on a buying trip, returning that evening to Paris to check into her regular hotel.

She plans to spend the 18th and 19th in Paris, browsing book dealers, consulting with a specialist librarian, having dinner with a coin dealer friend and his girlfriend who Tara's never met.  They have a convivial dinner in the shop, although Tara accidentally burns her hand on the stove. She spends an uncomfortable night in the hotel, the night of the 18th, with a towel and ice cubes wrapped around her hand.

The next morning her hand is still in pain, but she comes to realize it is still—again?—the 18th of November. Thomas is surprised to see her return from Paris a day early. He has no memory of his yesterday. Indeed, for the rest of the year, for the rest of the book, every morning he and the rest of the world wakes up to the 18th of November while Tara's hand heals, her hair grows, and she tracks the number of repetitions.

Thomas, who has no memory of yesterday's November 18, is willing to believe Tara's story and together they attempt to understand what has happened or break the cycle or both. They can't, but part of the book's suspense is watching and pulling for their attempts. Because nothing changes in Tara's external reality—every morning it is November 18—she and we really, really get to the minutia of that day.

On the Calculation of Volume has no chapters. Tara numbers the repetitions and Balle separates the short paragraphs with a line of space. And because I feel what I've said is inadequate, let me quote the American publisher with whom I agree:

"The first volume’s gravitational pull―a force inverse to its constriction―has the effect of a strong tranquilizer, but a drug under which your powers of observation only grow sharper and more acute. Give in to the book's logic (its minute movements, its thrilling shifts, its slant wit, its slowing of time) and its spell is utterly intoxicating." Go get drunk on it.