In Ascension

MARTIN MACINNES
BOOKER PRIZE LONGLIST 2023

Beyond a penchant for a particular type of Space Opera (Iain M Banks' Culture Series being my go-to Sci Fi comfort food), I'm the first to love a near-future page turner, of which there are legion, my all time favourite might well be Neal Stephenson's Seveneves, but see also the awesome Dark Matter by Blake Crouch and if you like something more long-winded but less well written the Long Earth quintet by Stephen Baxter and the late Terry Prachett. However, like with all fiction, it doesn't matter how nuts it is, it has to be consistently nuts, the universe the writer creates, whatever it is, has to make sense. Unfortunately, for me, In Ascension doesn't.

Maybe I was too excited in the run up to reading this. I bought it originally as a gift for my girlfriend because the blurb seemed to fit with her marine-focussed work. She absolutely loved it, so I was eager to get stuck in.

Not only was In Ascension longlisted for the Booker in 2023, it was either shortlisted or won a number of other prizes, so I expect I am in quite the minority here.

Whilst MacInnes can undoubtedly write well, there are sections in the book which are lovely, I feel that, apart from other things, he's been let down by poor editing. Spread throughout there are jarring inconsistencies.

At one point a definite article is used where the noun has not been mentioned before. I found myself skimming back a page or two to see what I'd missed and it turned out to be that I hadn't; the main characters are travelling in a vessel which we've been told has no 'real' windows, the lights fail and yet they can still see by starlight; Helena, the sister of the protagonist is described as a top-notch lawyer living in Jakarta and yet when she goes to another tropically hot place on the other side of the globe, she can't bear the heat; Helena again, this top lawyer, apparently likes cleaning her sister's flat for her when she finds it too dirty; at one point the protagonist Leigh is asked, about 200 pages in, what she would miss most on a long journey couped-up with two other humans, her reply 'sex' is the only mention of the word, or of anything approaching arousal in the whole book. The inconsistencies in characterisation and the plot itself were jarring. A key point in the novel turns on Leigh getting the job of her dreams, but then we're told she knows nothing about the job as it's all top secret. How then does she know it's the job of her dreams?

These inconsistencies should have been ironed out in the editing process and I can't see how they were missed. McInnes' style, however, can also be difficult. In the book he has the tendency to describe what a character is like over many pages rather than illustrating their personality through scenes or plot lines. At home we call the CSI Miami gambit, stating everything as it is just to get it across as quickly as possible.

The story is sweeping and covers familial relationships in some detail. When McInnes has Leigh describing her past, I was reminded a points of Graham Swift's Waterland, there were some lovely passages, but I couldn't get my head around how Leigh's mother was only ever referred to by her first name, though I completely bought into the (without giving too much away) relationship between her and her father and how/why her younger sister Helena knew nothing about it.

The book left me wanting more answers than it provided, and though it tied up well enough at the end, it was only because we were suddenly expected, a hundred pages earlier, to accept an impossibility to make it all work, we weren't led in to it.

Over all, I clearly wasn't a fan, though I seem to be in the minority. It's a good plot, but could've been much better executed.

Selected Reading List

1. Iain M. Banks, The Player of Games (1988)
2. Neal Stephenson, Seveneves (2015)
3. Blake Crouch, Dark Matter (2016)
4. Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett, The Long Earth (2012)
5. Martin MacInnes, In Ascension (2023)
6. Graham Swift, Waterland (1983)