Guest review by Ben Tufnell: IN ASCENSION by Martin MacInnes

 "For all the big ideas, the sheer scale of the story, the narrative is compelling. I was gripped, hurtling headlong towards an astonishing conclusion."

Ben Tufnell is a writer and curator based in London, where he runs Parafin, an art gallery. He has published widely on modern and contemporary art, in particular on artforms that engage with landscape and nature. His short stories have been published by Conjunctions, Litro, Lunate, Storgy and Structo, amongst others, and his debut novel, The North Shore, is published by Fleet.

Close to the opening of this extraordinary novel, the narrator, Leigh, peruses the bookshelves in her mother's office. Femi is a theoretical mathematician and Leigh notes volumes with intimidating titles like Philosophy of Cusp Forms and Ultraparallel Theorem, as well as one bearing only an infinity symbol, a lemniscate, on its spine. It is a sign. That symbol with its interlocking ovoids recurs in many different forms throughout this ingeniously constructed book: in a mysterious message that may be from an extraterrestrial intelligence, in the shape of the Nereus, the spaceship that eventually carries Leigh to the edge of the solar system. Indeed, In Ascension is itself structured like an infinity symbol, a Moebius whose ending returns us to the beginning.

Yet, while taking us on a vast and awe-inspiring journey to the stars, In Ascension is grounded in life on Earth. It is a story about connectedness, about nature and human nature; ecologies, both macro and micro. The linking motif running through the book is water: water as a carrier of life, water as connector, water as protector (the Nereus, named after a Greek sea god, contains an ocean in its hull). MacInnes beautifully evokes a formative moment, when Leigh, swimming near her home in Rotterdam as an escape from her unhappy childhood, has an insight into the interconnectedness of all lifeforms and environments - 'there was no gap separating my body from the living world' - and this notion is a sort of foundation for all that follows.

Leigh becomes a marine biologist specialising in algae.In the near future, against a backdrop of climate collapse, she joins a scientific expedition to investigate a newly-discovered marine vent, which initial readings suggest may be deeper than the Mariana Trench.She and her colleagues speculate about the role thermal vents may have played in the genesis of early lifeforms, even the origin of life itself. As their ship nears the site, anomalous phenomena begin to occur. The leader of the expedition suggests they may have found 'a location of singular importance in the history of life on the planet...a cradle, a garden...' When the expedition attempts to measure the depth of t the trench their initial readings suggest it is 36kms deep, three times that of the Mariana Trench. Subsequent readings suggest it is many, many times deeper than that. It is the series of jaw- dropping moments in a book which challenges our sense of the possible.

Soon after, the focus turns outwards, towards space. A mysterious object, decorated with runes a and symbols is detected passing through the outer solar system. A message is received from the Voyager probe, now billions of miles distant and long presumed inactive. A new propulsion system is developed which will allow a spaceship to travel at hitherto unfeasible speeds.

Leigh develops new algal strains as a source of food ( and psychological comfort, the algae's greenness a potential salve against the sense of loss experienced as our blue-green planet retreats into the distance) for a long extra-planetary journey. She trains as a member of the support crew for the mission, but it is no surprise when she and her colleagues are bumped up to become the primary crew. As the Nereus passes beyond the heliopause (the limit of the sun's influence) things begin to blur, as if the narrative logic of space and time is being stretched and distorted by the vastness of the journey.

There's more, of course, but I've already given so much away. What I will say is that MacInnnes handles his material - and his research, which must have been extensive- deftly. And for all the big ideas, the sheer scale of the story, the narrative is compelling. I was gripped, hurtling headlong towards an astonishing conclusion. However, a word of caution: readers who like their stories neatly tied up may well be frustrated. Readers who enjoy something more open, more speculative, will find In Ascension completely satisfying.

It's a big story, beautifully told, austere and grand, filled with ideas. It is mind-boggling, mind-expanding, enriching. Rightly longlisted for the Booker Prize, I would be amazed if it didn't make the shortlist. Indeed, it's hard to imagine a more ambitious novel being published this year. It gives us the story of a life and a story of life itself.

In Ascension is published by Atlantic Books  

Ben Tufnell's The North Shore was chosen by Adèle as one of her books of the year in our birthday round-up.

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THE FLOW by Amy-Jane Beer, reviewed by Linda Newbery

 

" ... conjures natural surroundings, weathers, landscapes and of course flowing, falling and trickling water with striking immediacy." 

Linda Newbery edits Writers Review. Her latest publication, This Book is Cruelty Free: Animals and Us, is a guide to compassionate living for teenagers and adults.

"Something happens to our brains when we stare at moving water: a sort of broad, effortless attentiveness," Amy-Jane Beer wrote in a Guardian feature, and I think most of us recognise this. "Spend a quiet hour on a riverbank watching water slide by," she writes in her introduction here, "and you might find yourself wondering where it comes from, and where it might be going. You might even ask yourself What is a river? The answer is simultaneously simple enough that it is taught to nursery-age children, and vast enough that the mind struggles to hold it."

This expansion from immediate mental and physical sensations to the changes wrought over aeons of Earth history makes The Flow a thoroughly engaging read: personal, confiding and anecdotal, but also packed with information about geology, wildlife and botany, folklore and place-names. An experienced and apparently very brave kayaker, Amy-Jane Beer lost a close friend in a river accident. On a kind of pilgrimage to the river gorge in the Howgills where her friend Kate tragically died, she resolved to explore, know and appreciate waterways in all their moods and forms. She portrays natural surroundings, weathers, landscapes and of course flowing, falling and trickling water with striking immediacy.

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe," wrote John Muir, and The Flow is a testament to this, showing the interconnectedness of ecosystems, how they can be damaged and how, sometimes, they can recover from human interventions, if given time and space to do so. 

No nature writing of our times can be free from a sense of grief at all we have to lose: or even, at times, seem intent on losing. There's anger and frustration here as well as appreciation: about the (now well-documented) pollution of the River Wye by run-off from intensive poultry units, and the inadequacy of the Environment Authority to prevent or even properly measure river pollution in general; about the modern love of tidiness that too often wants river-water channelled quickly downstream between neat banks, at the expense of water-meadows and floodplains which could do so much to absorb groundwater; and about the sobering fact that around 97% of rivers in England are legally the property of landowners, so in most cases to canoe, swim, paddle or snorkel in them is to trespass. (I didn't know that.) Amy-Jane Beer points, too, to the deliberate and false separation of town and country in attempts to keep control over land and resist change (something I'm well aware of, as a rural resident fiercely opposed to hunting and shooting). She comments on the hostility often shown to landscape restoration: "a minority in positions of significant influence continue stoking an 'us' and 'them' narrative." Every challenge she's met with on a river, she says, has come from a privileged white male - something that's come to media attention in recent weeks, with the attempt of Devon landowner Alexander Darwall to ban wild camping on Dartmoor; Amy-Jane Beer has been vocal about that on behalf of Right to Roam. More positively, she meets in her travels various people who share her deep love of ecosystems and work to improve them, whether by planting trees to slow the course of a river, introducing beavers to Devon rivers or rewilding their own patch of land.

Each chapter is focused on Beer's exploration of a particular place and habitat - by walking or climbing, wild camping or swimming in icy water.  She's a likeable and immensely knowledgeable companion, whose sense of wonder at the grandeur, variety and sheer incomprehensible age of the Earth pervades her writing.  Explaining rock formations to her young son, " ... for a moment I grasp a bigger picture. This weird formation isn't just on the surface. We're standing on millions of cubic metres of it - a structure that is both skeleton and shell, as much conduit as barrier - and all of it potentially subject to the influence of running water. There are rivulets and rivers down there. Some of that drizzle we walked through earlier - freshly condensed in the air above us - has already gone on below, on its way to becoming something else. Seeping, washing, leaching, dissolving, depositing, freezing or vaporising. It has no destination, only spaces and forms it passes through, and occasional organic or mineral partners, any of which might sit out of the dance for a matter of hours or billions of years, before the water whisks them back into play." Eloquent, insightful, exhilarating - it's no surprise to find in the acknowledgements that Beer is an admirer of Robert Macfarlane, whose readers will find much to enjoy and appreciate here. 

The Flow is published by Bloomsbury.

More nature writing reviewed on the blog:

Sightlines by Kathleen Jamie, reviewed by Sue Purkiss

Natural Selection: a Year in the Garden by Dan Pearson, reviewed by Linda Newbery

The Outrun by Amy Liptrot, reviewed by Paula Knight

12 Birds to Save your Life - Nature's Lessons in Happiness by Charlie Corbett, reviewed by Linda Sargent