In Ascension

December 4, 2023
Scottish writer MacInnes (Infinite Ground) spins a thought-provoking story of underwater and outer space exploration. At the outset, Dutch microbiologist Leigh joins a mission to explore a deep vent in the Atlantic Ocean believed to host ancient organisms. A series of dramatic episodes ensues as she encounters inexplicable phenomena and falls victim to a mysterious illness. Undaunted, Leigh then accepts a job with a space agency in California. What looks like an opportunity to further her investigations into algae turns out to be the start of a remarkable trek into the cosmos. Much of the novel’s tension arises from whether Leigh will survive the journey and whether she’ll encounter alien life, but MacInnes gracefully contrasts well-paced moments of peril with his protagonist’s meditations on her relationships with her abusive father and detached mother, whose struggle with dementia complicates Leigh’s decision to join the space mission. The familial dysfunction mirrors one of the book’s major concerns: that the relationship between people and the natural environment has been damaged almost beyond repair. Despite the lingering sense of doom, MacInnes ensures readers never lose sight of what Leigh calls “the generosity of porous life.” This brims with humanity. Agent: David Forrer, InkWell Management.

January 1, 2024
A Dutch scientist travels farther than humankind ever dreamed possible to explore the origins of life itself in this extraordinary novel. Marine biologist Leigh's journey begins aboard a ship tasked with uncovering the secrets of a newly discovered vent of a seemingly impossible depth in the Atlantic--three times deeper than the Mariana Trench--which she believes could reveal truths about the earliest life on Earth. The expedition is fraught, and a sense of unreality settles over the crew as their submersible plunges to unfathomable depths. When Leigh returns, she's invited to join another mission, this time going beyond our solar system, taking advantage of newly discovered propulsion technology. The mission, Leigh learns, is a response to a mysterious beckoning from an extraterrestrial object. MacInnes (Infinite Ground, 2017) deftly unpacks Leigh's origins as the daughter of a violently abusive father and her distancing from her mother and sister, even as her mother's faculties slowly decline. Absorbed in her work, Leigh travels with her crew members beyond the reach of the sun's light and finds the same dreamlike, hallucinatory atmosphere of the underwater voyage that started it all. Thought-provoking, elegant, and riveting, In Ascension frames the search for our beginnings as a challenging voyage into the unknown.

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