AshehougAgency

Cones

A family saga spanning several generations and three continents, Cones mirrors the great political and cultural conflicts of the 20th century.

In Cones, John Kavan puts his family’s dramatic story into writing, hoping that his infant son Sean will read it when he grows up. The son of the resourceful, artistically gifted and deeply troubled George, John moves with his family from the U.S. to his mother’s birthplace, a tiny town outside of Bergen on the west coast of Norway. As his parents’ marriage falls apart and his increasingly alcoholic father’s erratic behaviour brands the entire family as outsiders, John is forced to move again with his mother and siblings.

Scarred by their brutal childhood, each of the children nevertheless succeeds in creating a new existence for themselves, as their lives are woven together with those of others. John seeks and finds both meaning and redemption in the art, literature and music of the European cultural heritage, experiencing this as the very opposite of the sectarian religion and materialism that crippled his father.

Praise for Cones:

"[...] as far as John is concerned, he appears to see the light in lifting the esthetic experience into the realm of the divine, particularly when it comes to great masters of music like Bach and Schubert. Of these he writes in an intoxicating style, carried forwards by baroque sentences and a throbbing use of words that contrast sharply with the conventional Norwegian minimalist style. [...] Although the language and the story occasionally runs out of steam [...] this novel has a drive, a pulsating need to deal with significant matters that enables it to shake off most objections that the reader might have."
( Bergens Tidende)

" Cones is a wonderful debut shaped as a love letter from father to son [... John] writes in a maelstrom-like way when depicting the emotional depths of his relatives. It's fascinating, because it feels as if he makes the reader breathe with the rhythm of the words."
( Dagsavisen)

First published: 2008, Aschehoug Fiction

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