“Djønne has written one of this year’s most powerful novels, about two brothers who are traumatized by a pitch black childhood. This debut novel is a bold, terrifyingly intense portrait of a family where violence runs strong through the generations.”
Maya Troberg Djuve, Dagbladet, Books of the Year 2022
“It’s not the violence and the darkness that is most thought-provoking in Leander Djønne’s first novel – it’s the deeply contrarian relationship to time … The novel untangles all its thinking in direct contrast to shallow, ephemeral, digital time … it’s the literary ease that impresses the most in this novel. With a few, small exceptions, this feels like real literature all the way. That’s extremely rare in a debut, and it’s not many established writers who manage that either: a novel that feels written rather than typed – completely devoid of any marring noise from the novel’s motor”
Bernhard Ellefsen, Morgenbladet
“The novel gets off to a furious start in a rocky landscape. Brutal violence on a farm in a rocky mountain side. “The Father» kills «the Mother». You feel it in your body when you read. Short, concise sentences full of physical and spiritual darkness … this completely unsentimental mercilessness is undoubtedly part of what makes this such a powerful novel … This is his first novel. There should be more. Contemporary Norwegian literature needs people who really know how the physical world works. And we need people who can write about violence and pain without looking away.”
Preben Jordal, Aftenposten
“Impressive … a pitch-black story about two adult brothers broken by a horrible childhood … the style is so confident, poetic and mesmerizing that makes The Ash Spiral a terrifyingly intense read”
5/6 stars
Maya Troberg Djuve, Dagbladet
“… one of the bleakest family stories I have read … The Ash Spiral is however just as much a novel about the landscape that surrounds this sorely tried family … a powerful, distinctive debut. Towards the end, The Ash Spiral even turns into a kind of thriller”
Kåre Bulie, Klassekampen
“Pitch-black Hardanger brew carved in rock. Leander Djønne makes his debut with a dark story of a broken family at the rocky foot of a mountain deep in the Hardanger fjord … revenge is what we call an archetypical motive in literature, and it works very well as a motor in this story. The novel transforms us quite simply into a blood-thirsty gang of supporters. Will the mother, and her sons, get retribution? … It’s all quite dark, but excellently executed … [The Ash Spiral] is a singular rock that sort of shines all by itself among this autumn’s Norwegian books.”
Knut Hoem, NRK Bok
“Djønne uses nature, landscape and a religious community as both backdrop and co-actors in a rockhard, brutal and merciless novel about guilt and atonement – and revenge. It’s a grim novel. It’s sinister. And it’s good […] As someone who lives in Hardanger, the same landscape the author grew up in and lives in, I obviously picture the mountains and the fjord while I read the book. Or rather: when I devour it. It’s brutal and painful, but Djønne drives the story forward, uncovering one layer after another and weaving the different threads together. The prose is eruptive, the story blasts its way ahead. We see both landscape and characters cleary before us; we are there – we are pulled along and into Djønne’s Ash Spiral universe. The book is hard to put down.”
Mette Bleken, Hardanger Folkeblad
“The darkest novel in Norwegian literature since Amalie Skram’s [1887-1898 novel quartet] The People at Hellemyr … a powerful debut”
Knut Hoem, NRK/Nyhetsmorgen
