Book Specs 📖

• Author: Solvej Balle
• Genre: Literary/Science/Philosophical Fiction
• Publisher: New Directions
• Pages: 171 (Paperback)

One Sentence Synopsis🔖

See what happens when a bunch of people all get stuck on November 18th.

Notes/Thoughts📝

• Good things come to those who wait!! Finally the highly anticipated book 4 of OTCOV! I snagged a copy on the first day it was released in Toronto gobbled it down. Initial thoughts: Not my favourite (Book 2 remains undefeated) but it started off strong with a quotable line. The book focuses on group dynamics which is starkly contrasted with the first three books where Tara is mostly isolated from other people, with the exception of a Thomas and Henry. Also, Ms. Balle, you gotta stop making the end of each book a cliffhanger and making me wait more than half a year to read the next one!!!
• The POV used in this book was very interesting.It was Tara, but it was third person Tara? I was confused at some parts because why was Tara a part of someone else’s narrative, or why was Tara referring to herself as Tara?? It could be the blending of other identities and also a separation of who Tara is (writing Tara vs thinking Tara). Credit to Writing Class teacher last year for making me notice these literary choices – makes reading super fun!
• In the book, you’re introduced to a slew of newcomers that enter the commune/home in Bremen but none of them really stick with you because they’re meant to be transient. I think of backpackers/nomads that you share a moment with during a short stay but you continue on your separate paths. Travelling solo a couple of times myself and backpacking, there’s a unique experience of meeting many people but still feeling alone despite having the most enlightening conversations. I felt that.
• The social aspect of Book four brought tons of discussion around how humans organize as a society i.e. sharing stories, deciding which topics get prioritized, dividing roles and responsibilities, etc. It was so fun seeing them build their little society from scratch and figure out how they could all exist together in this shared time freeze.
• An idiom I loved: “Tempest in a teapot”: a situation is being blown out of proportion, similar to a violent storm being contained within a tiny teapot. Will use this instead of “Making a mountain out of a molehill”!

“Quotes”🗣

“It is hard to know where something ends and where something begins. Or someone. Where a person starts or stops. Where the next begins.”

“Perhaps that’s how it is: We are guests and when we have guests, it reminds us that everything is on loan, that we’ve been sitting on borrowed sofas and chairs, with arms and legs that are ours, belnging to bodies that are ours, and all the words and sentences, all the gestures, none of which are truly our own. That much was clear to us, since we couldn’t help but borrow one another’s gestures. Or sentences.“

“It feels as though we had each been walking down our own path in the same forest. As though we had got lost and done so separately, but we were not alone in being lost, because the others were on the paths too. And now we have found our way to a clearing and suddenly we see that we share not only the clearing but the forest too. We think it begins when we meet, but in fact, our stories were already entwined.”

“Maybe it is all of us. Maybe we are all a little uneasy. About tremors and unforeseen changes. It has happened before: losing a world familiar to us. We know that we cannot be sure of anything. Or anyone. As if another person were a gift we must cherish.”

“Perhaps we have simply made time pass. Together.“

“When do we know enough to give things names? When is it time to scrap the words we have and invent new ones?

“The world is not a calm sea where all you have to do is refrain from rocking the boat…The world is a rocking boat, a ship in a storm, and when you’re capsized, that’s why. Because the world is a place that throws you overboard…You think that a single action can rock the world, that you have to hold such a delicate balance. But things can happen–and they do happen…Or rather, shit happens. Out of nowhere, your world shakes. But you’re knocked down because the world was already shaking. Not because you rocked your little boat.

“Some leap into focus the moment we meet them, and within an hour, you feel like you know them. Others take longer to emerge from the background, a gradual reveal, and some you barely notice until suddenly they unfold–offering a story, an idea, a gesture, an experience–and all at once, you see them in color, brightly lit.

“She’s always reading, maybe that’s why. You get the impression that she sees the world through a different lens, as she wonders and speculates and unexpectedly breaks into bizarre reflections”

“Maybe that is why I write. Maybe it’s my way of being alone. Maybe the page is my door out of the disarray. A means of finding a way through all the thoughts and voices that blur together…I write myself onto a narrow path, sentence, by sentence, I make my way forward, tiptoeing, so softly. Alone.”