Volume I
Tara Selter has slipped out of time.
It was clear that the day always returned to its starting point, but that there were also variations. It was not mechanical, there was more to it. It was the same day which kept recurring, but it was not set in stone.
Every morning, she wakes up to the 18th of November. She no longer expects to wake up to the 19th of November, and she no longer remembers the 17th of November as if it were yesterday.
She comes to know the shape of the day like the back of her hand - the grey morning light in her Paris hotel; the moment a blackbird breaks into song; her husband's surprise at seeing her return home unannounced. But for everyone around her, this day is lived for the first and only time. They do not remember the other 18ths of November, and they do not believe her when she tries to explain.
As Tara approaches her 365th 18th of November, she can't shake the feeling that somewhere underneath the surface of this day, there's a way to escape.
Volume II
Tara Selter is searching for a future.
If I want seasons, I will have to build them myself. If I am to have a future, I will have to build it myself. I put the pieces together, little fragments of season and I write it all down.
Tara has been stuck in the 18th of November for over a year's worth of days. She still wakes up to the same newspapers, and the same blank faces when she explains that she has seen this all before. Until one morning, she boards a train and finds herself in a new day. It is still the eighteenth of November, but the faces are different, the weather is colder.
She realises that she has found a way out of her endless autumn. By moving across Europe rather than through time, she can collect the ingredients for the seasons: the thin film of ice on puddles, the fresh spring breeze, the blazing summer sun. As she travels, she begins to hope for a new future, one that will run in parallel to the eighteenth of November, one that she must build for herself.
Volume III
Tara Selter is no longer alone.
I have met someone who remembers. Yesterday. That is to say, I met him yesterday. But he remembers yesterday, too. He remembers that we met yesterday.
Tara Selter has lived the eighteenth of November 1,143 times when she notices a break in the pattern: a man has changed his shirt. The man is Henry Dale, and he remembers all the days that have come before. He knows that time has fallen out of joint. Now they are two of a kind - trapped in the eighteenth of November, but no longer alone.
Together they learn to share their present; their voices grow hoarse recounting their small battles against it and their bewilderment at the disintegrating world. Henry sees things differently to Tara: he does not think that time will put itself back together and he does not think that the future will come around. But he makes her realise that she is no longer the same person she was before this fault in time. And he makes her believe that there may be others to find within it.
Volume IV
Tara Selter has found a new home.
In a sprawling villa on the outskirts of Bremen, Tara Selter is starting to settle into a new kind of eighteenth of November. Her days with Henry, Ralf and Olga revolve around the daily routines of practical chores: gathering provisions, splitting firewood. But one morning, there are five new arrivals at their wrought-iron gate.
As more people continue to arrive, their home fills with movement, voices fill the air; a flurry of people asking questions, sharing their eighteenths of November. Slowly, they settle into a new routine and Tara begins to breathe a little easier. Could they create a new world inside the eighteenth of November?
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