Reading notes: 'On the Calculation of Volume,' vol. 1

21 Feb, 2026

Highly recommended. Some spoiler-free notes:

1. I've looked at a lot of the recent Booker Prize long- and shortlists, and this book was not what I would have guessed from basic facts I knew about it, including that it had been shortlisted.
2. It's no accident that Knausgaard gave a (glowing) blurb for the book. It's not easy to read this book without comparing it to My Struggle, for those who have read the latter, but I'd recommend it just as highly either way.
3. The book is a bit shorter even than the page count would suggest; the pages are short and it's never a slog.
4. You can read the book as a meditation on solitude, a response to Proust, a feminist allegory, or any number of other ways. This is partly because the book is quite intelligible and concrete in some ways, yet ambiguous in others. It's also partly because there's no sanctimony or heavy-handedness.

#reading notes