Book review | 2023 Booker Prize-Longlisted Martin MacInnes’ In Ascension’s singular achievement is inexhaustibility

Martin MacInnes (Photo: Gary Doak), and his 2023 Booker Prize-Longlisted novel 'In Ascension'.

Edinburgh-based writer Martin MacInnes’ third novel In Ascension (Atlantic Books, 2023, 512 pages, Rs 1,617 hardcover) is one of the 13 books longlisted for this year’s Booker Prize. His previous works — Infinite Ground (2016) and Gathering Evidence (2020) — won him multiple awards and a distinct recognition among literary critics: that MacInnes is “a writer of serious ambition and talent”. Leafing through the first few pages of his latest shall convince one why he’s hailed as one of the writers shaping the UK’s future.

Divided into five parts, In Ascension appears to be the story of a marine microbiologist from Rotterdam, Dr Leigh-Ann Hasenbosch. The novel is difficult to categorise into any genre for multiple reasons. The deep-sea explorations and off-world expeditions its protagonist undertakes can render it the science fiction label. However, the philosophical, ontological, and linguistic arguments concerning nature and deep-seated humanity, and a commentary on familial relations and its portrayal of sisterhood in all its complexity defy any such categorisation. It’s also fitting to mention that MacInnes’ doesn’t endorse the term ‘climate-change novel’ as his book is increasingly getting referred to as.

The story begins with Leigh introducing her dysfunctional family. Father Geert, who wanted to become an architect ended up being a hydraulic engineer and advisor for Waterschappen, a regional water board, and Fenna, a recluse mother, who, according to Leigh, exaggerates her migraine symptoms, is a mathematician, and Helen is her younger sister.

Leigh is the principal narrator of the first three parts of the novel. Difficult childhood and grief are writ large over the first few chapters. Additionally, throughout her growing up years her mother remained absent and her father a source of fear and unprecedented violence, in the absence of a place she could call home, Leigh begins looking for an escape. The sea comes to the rescue.

When she took the plunge, swimming across it, she discovered “a secret chamber of [her] own.” Further, she experienced the distance between her body and the water body diminishing, for as water pulled her, deep into it, she was “drawn, equally involuntarily, to [her] past.” Later, she realised how this made her even closer to Geert. She was always “carrying a part of him all along.”

But unlike him, she was keen on discovering the first forms of life on Earth. As Leigh begins experiencing the natural world up close, she notes how the world is “still in a state of creation,” for newer historical evidence informs a newer future. Soon enough, she begins working with a group of professionals on a ship exploring a vent. The data they collected over time should’ve provided some hints towards evidence of new life; however, they return disappointed as their leader goes missing. Then, Leigh moved to California to work with the Institute for Coordinated Research in Space (ICORS) with the help of a professional connection, Amy, from her previous stint. However, she couldn’t obtain any further information on her employer, who were planning to begin mining expeditions on Saturn’s moons, leaving Helen, who had moved to Jakarta, frustrated, as she kept on worrying about Fenna and her precarious health now that she was on her own in old age.

The way the author manoeuvres the narrative to unfold towards the end leaves one in shock. As one progresses through the book, along with Leigh, who’s more convinced that algae “wasn’t just a food source, or something to remind the crew of home: it was an organism rich in genetic heritage,” one is presented with the futility of indulging in trying to attach meaning to life. “It’s a miracle we’re born and a miracle we die,” MacInnes writes.

There’s duality, almost Schrödinger’s is-the-cat-alive-or-dead question kind of appeal to this book. Further, two sentences come to mind helping attest the fact that co-creation and circularity are two themes central to MacInnes’ novel. “In order to create itself, life already has to exist. Cell theory is circular.” And this, “Life is circular, atemporal. Every cell an instance of time travel.” The co-existence of these two themes naturally follows that what must end must begin again. And that’s precisely how this novel works, its “end instigates a beginning.”