2023 Booker Longlist: In Ascension by Martin MacInnes

by imabookwormy on September 8, 2023

Next up for our panel is the novel In Ascension by Scottish writer Martin MacInnes. In ascension is MacInnes’ third novel. His debut novel Infinite Ground, won the Somerset Maugham Award and was shortlisted for the Saltire Awards.

Synopsis for In Ascension taken from Booker Prize website: Leigh grew up in Rotterdam, drawn to the waterfront as an escape from her unhappy home life. Enchanted by the undersea world of her childhood, she excels in marine biology, travelling the globe to study ancient organisms.

When a trench is discovered in the Atlantic Ocean, Leigh joins the exploration team, hoping to find evidence of Earth’s first life forms. What she instead finds calls into question everything we know about our own beginnings, and leaves her facing an impossible choice: to remain with her family, or to embark on a journey across the breadth of the cosmos.

You can purchase a copy of the book here

Keep reading to find out how our panellists rated this book.

BookWorm’s Thoughts: I was pleased that the Booker chose to include a SciFi book in their longlist selection; after I started reading I was not pleased that they chose this one.

This book did have an interesting story. The problem is it’s so deeply buried under all the mundane needless details that you would need an archaeologist to dig it out. The author seems to subscribe to the theory of why use 1 word when 12 will do. By the end of the book my overwhelming feeling was relief that I will never have to read this again.

I can’t even give this points for originality as it reminded me of the snoozefest that was Solaris and the absence of anything happening that was Contact.

To sum this up in one word it would have to be, boring.

Writing quality: 2/5
Originality: 2 /5
Character development: 2/4
Plot development: 2/4
Overall enjoyment: 0/2
Total: 8/20

Tracy’s Thoughts: In Ascension seems to be a Love it or Hate it book.

I hated it. I liked the beginning- the science info and the diving expedition- that was interesting. In a boring sort of way. But the space stuff. Nope.

I’m biased against this kind of book to begin with: I don’t care for space exploration fiction much- I did love Hitchhiker’s Guide, but that was when I was in college, and it was funny. This wasn’t. Also, and this is a big problem for me: I listened to this one, since this was the only way to get this in the US at the time I purchased it. The narrator was absolutely horrible.

I did try to read it- it still didn’t work for me. So I am still firmly in the hate it camp, but it’s not because of the writing style, or the character development, though the main character was awful. It was me. And that audio narrator.

Writing quality: 4/5
Originality: 4/5
Character development: 3/4
Plot: 3/4
Enjoyment: 0/2
Total: 14/20

Anita’s Thoughts: I didn’t hate this book, but I think its moments of brilliance were far outweighed by its flaws. For me, the brilliance mostly lay in the crafting of individual sentences and moments of vivid description, especially as relating to nature, the environment, and I thought the final chapter was beautifully rendered. I can see why this book was nominated for a literary prize. It’s not like the author can’t write. But reading his work felt like playing a slot machine. You pull and pull and pull, hoping to hear that happy sound of the jackpot. And there’s just enough “winning” to keep you going . . .but barely. In the end, I didn’t feel like I walked away with enough payoff to justify the time spent.

It was so uneven, often boring. The characters weren’t fully realized because if they were, I would have cared about them when they were in danger, and I never did. So much straight up narration. The book is divided into five parts, and it’s a miracle anyone makes it through the second part which is mostly set up for what’s to come. It did wonders for my insomnia though.

Writing quality: 4/5
Originality: 3/5
Character development: 2/4
Plot development: 1/4
Overall enjoyment: 1/2
Total: 11/20

Jen’s Thoughts: Once again, I must diverge from my panelists because I really enjoyed this book and didn’t find it boring at all. This is the kind of book that I believe requires multiple readings to fully comprehend and when I got to the end, I wanted to re-read it to see what threads I missed. I thought the writing was exquisite and the big ideas (origin and meaning of life, the importance of connection, the circular nature of where we come from and where we end up, and so on) were interesting.

I liked the way in which things were interconnected from the childhood experience of Leigh (the protagonist) to her field of study and the role of water throughout. This wasn’t really a book about character development and I did feel like the characters were kind of flat. Outside of Leigh, very little attention was giving to character development. I also appreciated the fact that this is the first book on the longlist (from what I’ve read so far) that is relevant to our socio-political climate. I’ve heard people complain about the level of detail (about the algae, the space exploration, etc.) but this level of detail reminded me of Richard Power’s Overstory which I also loved and in the case of this book, the detail was fitting for the content.

Writing quality: 5/5
Originality: 5/5
Character development: 2/4
Plot development: 3/4
Overall enjoyment: 2/2
Total: 17/20

Have you read this one? Let us know what you thought. Which judge did you agree with?

Our panel’s rankings