In Ascension

In Ascension is a 2023 novel by Martin MacInnes, published in the UK by Atlantic Books and in the US by Grove Atlantic. It is published or forthcoming in ten languages. The novel tells the story of Leigh, a young girl who grows up in the Netherlands amid the specter of climate change and eventually becomes a marine scientist exploring ocean trenches and investigating an anomaly at the edge of the solar system.

The book was longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize, was the winner of Blackwell's 2023 Book of the Year and the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year.

Narrative
The novel takes place in the near future and tells the story of Leigh Hasenbosch, who grew up in Rotterdam. The city has built an elaborate network of dikes, dams and other barriers to hold back rising sea levels. Leigh was raised by her mother, a mathematician, and her father, a hydraulic engineer for the regional water board. Growing up, Leigh would often explore the water, including the man-made beach in Rotterdam and the Nieuwe Maas river. Leigh and her sister eventually escape their abusive father, and Leigh goes to university in Rotterdam to study marine ecology and microbiology before attending the Max Planck Institute for graduate school. She then begins her career exploring the ocean, including sites near the Azores and underwater thermal vents near the Caribbean coast of South America. During her research trip, she and her team are tasked with testing a remotely operated underwater vehicle developed by NASA that they hope to one day deploy to explore the oceans of Jupiter's moon Europa. Engineers eventually develop a breakthrough in space propulsion allowing humans to travel much faster and farther than previously able. Hasenbosch's work developing an algae-based food source eventually leads her to an outer space mission investigating anomalies detected close to the Oort cloud. During her many travels and excursions Hasenbosch reflects on how valuable and rare life on earth is.

Reception
In a review for The Guardian, Adam Roberts stated: "The whole novel is beautifully written: richly atmospheric, full of brilliantly evoked detail, never sacrificing the grounded verisimilitude of lived experience to its vast mysteries, but also capturing a numinous, vatic strangeness that hints at genuine profundities about life. Nobody else writes like MacInnes, and this magnificent book is his best yet." In The Observer, John Self stated: "The mystery of where Leigh will end up is so enticing that it's a shame when the last substantive section of the book returns us to Earth and family life, with a thud of crammed backstory and a few future shocks. But an uncertain finish doesn't damage what went before. Indeed, it's an apt approach for a book that reminds us to value above all the journey we are on, and the world we live in." Writing for The Financial Times, Carl Wilkinson stated: "MacInnes deftly interweaves the science of cellular biology with the politics of familial relationships while using the tropes of science fiction to expand his novel’s horizons." With Wilkinson concluding that: "The control, the subtlety, the nuance and the richness of the novel is endlessly rewarding." Writing for The Times Literary Supplement, Beejay Silcox praised MacInnes for his insightful depiction of different characters in the book, stating: "In Ascension finds as much poetry in the human microbiome as it does in the grand revolutions of the planets."