In Ascension
In Ascension by Martin MacInnes is a novel published by Grove Atlantic in 2024, featuring 512 pages in English. The story follows Leigh, a young microbiologist whose childhood fascination with the ocean leads her to investigate a newly discovered deep vent in the Atlantic. As she embarks on this scientific journey, she uncovers revelations that challenge our understanding of life’s origins and the cosmos, intertwining her personal struggles with her professional ambitions.
Readers will find a narrative that explores themes of space exploration and the intricacies of human relationships. Leigh’s quest takes her from the depths of the ocean to the Mojave Desert, where she becomes involved with a new space agency. This journey forces her to confront a pivotal choice between her family obligations and the allure of discovery. In Ascension delves into the connections between the natural world and the cosmos, reflecting on existence and the ties that bind us to our homes and loved ones.
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LONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 BOOKER PRIZE
A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
An astonishing novel about a young microbiologist investigating an unfathomable deep vent in the ocean floor, leading her on a journey that will encompass the full trajectory of the cosmos and the passage of a single human life
Leigh grew up in Rotterdam, drawn to the waterfront as an escape from her unhappy home life and volatile father. Enchanted by the undersea world of her childhood, she excels in marine biology, traveling 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 the earth’s first life forms – what she instead finds calls into question everything we know about our own beginnings.
Her discovery leads Leigh to the Mojave desert and an ambitious new space agency. Drawn deeper into the agency’s work, she learns that the Atlantic trench is only one of several related phenomena from across the world, each piece linking up to suggest a pattern beyond human understanding. Leigh knows that to continue working with the agency will mean leaving behind her declining mother and her younger sister, and faces an impossible choice: to remain with her family, or to embark on a journey across the breadth of the cosmos.
Exploring the natural world with the wonder and reverence we usually reserve for the stars, In Ascension is a compassionate, deeply inquisitive epic that reaches outward to confront the greatest questions of existence, looks inward to illuminate the smallest details of the human heart, and shows how – no matter how far away we might be and how much we have lost hope – we will always attempt to return to the people and places we call home.
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