A beautifully written novel that juxtaposes the value of an individual life with the value of our planet, home to millions of species of living organisms
Longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize, Martin McInnes’s third book, In Ascension is an ambitious novel that follows Dutch marine biologist Leigh Hasenboch. Growing up with her little sister in Rotterdam, she is drawn to the waterfront, which is an escape from her troubled domestic life and volatile father. Enchanted by the aquatic environment, she excels in marine biology, and as an adult, travels the world researching ancient species. When a trench is discovered in the Atlantic Ocean, Leigh joins the research team in the hope of finding proof of the Earth’s early life forms. What she discovers puts into question everything we know about our origins.
Space, the final frontier: a view from space to a galaxy and stars. (Shutterstock)
512pp, ₹1580; Atlantic Books (The Booker Prizes)
After making her discovery, Leigh travels to the Mojave Desert, where she finds a visionary new space agency. As she becomes more and more engrossed in the work of the agency, she discovers that the Atlantic trench is just one of many connected global events which, when combined, suggest a pattern that is unfathomable to humans. Even as a vent appears beneath the sea, three times deeper than the Mariana Trench, advances in propulsion technology make interstellar travel possible. Leigh’s discovery that a specific species of algae may operate as a form of nutrition for humans ultimately propels her into the cosmos.
Despite the grand plot, the novel is really a character study of a tremendously gifted individual who is constantly attempting to overcome a traumatic childhood to experience the splendours of the world. Her father’s maltreatment of her as a child has a lasting impact and leads her to embrace a life of loneliness and isolate herself from her family. The trauma is a stain she can’t get rid of; memories keep returning, which, in turn, inspire her to keep going whether she’s on the seabed or far away in space.
A digital illustration of the Mariana Trench, the deepest point of the earth. (Shutterstock)
“I wanted desperately for my life to be my own creation, to not have my present behaviour reduced to things that happened when I was young. Going into the water was in first instance an escape, and maybe in some sense it still was. Maybe what I thought was an objective and impersonal interest in the origin and development of cellular life was in fact something smaller, an attempt to flee my own history but also an acceptably disguised way of exploring it. Maybe, rather than investigating the origins of life, I was merely and regrettably pursuing my own individual history.”
Martin MacInnes’s vivid imagery takes the reader on wild journeys into extraordinarily rich milieux that’s both without and within:
“You’re flawed, and the world you see corresponds to these flaws. Weaknesses define you, drive new and original strategies to cover them, and they make you who you are. You don’t exist without them. Correcting the errors – seeing perfectly and objectively – is neither desirable nor possible.”
Leigh is forced to choose between staying with her family or setting out on a journey across the universe – she knows that continuing to work for the agency will mean leaving behind her ailing mother and her younger sister.
Science fiction novels typically don’t make the Booker Prize longlists because the general assumption is that genre fiction isn’t literary enough to qualify. There’s an ease and efficiency in categorising fiction but it’s also an act of imprisonment. Beautifully written, In Ascencion rises above the confines of genre and though it didn’t make it to the shortlist, it’s still an amazing read that elicits gasps with its ambition.
Author Martin MacInnes (Gary Doak)
The author juxtaposes the value of an individual life, complete with its unique personal history and memories, with the value of our planet, home to millions of species of living organisms. In the end, this 500-page epic prods us for destroying the planet and reiterates that the climate crisis is a direct outcome of human actions.
Hritik Verma is an independent reviewer. He blogs at allayingart.wordpress.com. He is @Hritik38233434 on Twitter and @allayingart on Instagram
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