In Ascension was a critics favourite, named Blackwell’s Book of the Year, awarded the Arthur C. Clarke Award and longlisted for the Booker Prize, but the Dutch main character has an English name, swims on a mythical Rotterdam beach and refers to coffeeshops as “cafes” so this publication has some problems with the work. 

The 2023 novel follows Leigh, born and raised in Rotterdam, whose proximity to the water draws her to marine biology, a path that eventually takes her to the edge of the solar system. Scottish author Martin MacInnes starts off strong, with stark prose and a nuanced understanding of abusive family dynamics, but the nearly 500-page work falls short by the end. 

Earlier in her academic career, Leigh finds herself on a research vessel in the Caribbean exploring a recently opened sea vent. The depth is measured at least three times that of the Mariana Trench and Leigh volunteers to join several of her colleagues in exploring it. Testing doesn’t show anything unusual in the water but Leigh and her colleagues immediately start to have weird symptoms. 

The story then skips ahead to Leigh working in a mysterious lab on a project involving algae while trying to cope with her aging mother and the sister left behind. Her lab works together with others to form a new space agency, investigating not just the trench but the outer limits of our solar system. 

In Ascension portrays the complicated family dynamics – the three women navigating their relationship after the death of Leigh’s abusive father, her mother’s aging and the distance between them – impressively. The nuance is well done. 

The book does not have the same capacity for the nuance (or even basics) of Dutch culture. Even the name Leigh is not typically Dutch, in part because it would be pronounced differently than in English, and the work doesn’t address this.

She measures distance in feet and temperature in Fahrenheit. Leigh calls coffeeshops “cafes” and becomes a marine biologist because she grew up surrounded by water  which offers very little in the way of marine life. 

The book poses fascinating questions about the origins of life, how we came to be and what responsibilities children have to their parents but offers no answers. Regular readers of science fiction may find the book frustrating, as it opens with some interesting premises but then does not fully develop the world. 

In Ascension is the third work by MacInnes, whose debut novel, Infinite Ground, won the Somerset Maugham Award.  The writing is great but if you are familiar with the Netherlands, you will have to engage in some suspension of disbelief.

You can buy your copy of In Ascension from the American Book Center.