Ascension: A Novel [Hardcover]

Steven Galloway (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 12, 2003

It is the summer of 1976 and Salvo Ursari, a man of retirement age, is walking on a taut wire strung between the Twin Towers of New York's World Trade Center, almost fourteen hundred feet above the city. Far below him in the gaping crowd stands his wife, Anna, to whom he has made a solemn promise: This wire walk will end his career. In this daring moment, Steven Galloway opens his riveting novel about Salvo Ursari, whose life begins in 1919 amid a Transylvanian boyhood inhabited by gypsy folklore and inspired by the bravery of his persecuted people. Salvo's story moves irresistibly from a tragic fire that envelops his family, to street life in Budapest, where he learns the skills of a wire walker, to the carnivals of Europe and the competitive world of the American circus. Most fulfilled when living with paradox, Salvo feels safest while performing startling feats of balance on a wire high above the dangerous world; and most endangered if performing above a net. With compassion, warmth, and blazing originality, Ascension combines jaw-dropping storytelling, and fantastical symbolism with mesmerizing detail of Romany and circus culture, and an unforgettable walk with the amazing Salvo Ursari.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In Steven Galloway's Ascension the story of Salvo Usari, a Romany tightrope walker, begins where it ends: almost 1,400 feet about the streets of New York City in a fictional 1976 performance on a wire suspended between the World Trade Center towers. From this first moment, Galloway establishes a careful balance between a thrilling adventure story enriched by circus lore and ca haracter-driven tale reflecting Salvo's complex life and remarkable immigrant history.

Leaving New York, Galloway shifts to Savlo's youth in Transylvania, circa 1919. Salvo's father, Miksa, has taught his nine-year-old son the essential myths that form the Rom, or gypsy, identity, but the legends cannot prepare the boy for an abrupt tragedy, an accident at a gadje church, that leads to the murder of his father and mother and to Salvo's long separation from his brother and baby sister. Salvo climbs to the pinnacle of the mammoth church steeple, tears out his soul--flinging it towards God--and begins a wandering life. Galloway then traces the paths of the Usari siblings over the years until they are rejoined at work as a family of tightrope walkers, eventually achieving acclaim in the Fisher-Fielding circus in the United States. But even reunited the Usaris cannot escape tragedy and further death. In the end, Salvo must return to the wire alone to pacify his unquiet mind.

Galloway's execution of story and character is nearly flawless throughout, and his narrative, like Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, captures the essence of the 20th-century immigrant odyssey. But it is the blending of Romany folk tales and well-researched circus craft with this otherwise powerful narrative that defines Ascension and makes its unique contribution to literary art. --Patrick O'Kelley

From Booklist

Few novels can match the heart-stopping opening scene of this one, in which master tightrope walker Salvo Ursari traverses a thin wire strung between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Salvo learned his trade in the streets of Budapest after losing his parents in 1919 to a fire set by his gypsy-hating neighbors. He and his siblings become a featured act at carnivals in Europe and then are offered a prized contract with the storied Fisher-Felding Circus in 1938. They immigrate to America, where Salvo falls in love with wealthy Anna Simpson, who eventually throws over her privileged lifestyle to marry the circus performer. Their children eventually join the troupe, although the eldest child keeps his epileptic seizures hidden, a secret that leads to disaster during their most famous and dangerous trick, "the House." Although Galloway's second novel (following Finnie Walsh, 2001) contains interesting, entertaining material on Romany culture and circus life, it proves no match for the crystalline passages devoted to the death-defying stunts of the tightrope walkers, which are truly mesmerizing. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf (August 12, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786712082
• ISBN-13: 978-0786712083
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,039,980 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Steven Galloway was born in Vancouver, and raised in Kamloops, British Columbia. He attended the University College of the Cariboo and the University of British Columbia. His debut novel, Finnie Walsh, was nominated for the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award. His second novel, Ascension, was nominated for the BC Book Prizes' Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and has been translated into numerous languages. His third novel, The Cellist of Sarajevo, was published in spring of 2008. It was heralded as "the work of an expert" by the Guardian, and has become an international bestseller with rights sold in 20 countries. Galloway has taught creative writing at the University of British Columbia.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Falling through life, February 10, 2004

By 

"horacesense" (Red Deer, AB Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: ASCENSION (Hardcover)

ASCENSION, by Steven Galloway

There are few people who will not feel the fearful tension of observing another person conquering the high wire. It is a sense that normally can only be endured for relatively short spans of time. In this story Steven Galloway has his characters, led by the high wire artist Salvo Ursari, carefully and persistently walk that wire through a lifetime beginning in the 1920's of central Europe and ending across the Atlantic in America ending in 1975. It is a lifetime of unrelenting suspense.
Like the wire itself, the technique of maintaining constantly recurring emotions of success bordering on disaster throughout a book is a path that is very fine and perilous. If an author is not careful the intense apprehension of so many situations may overcome the reader and all is lost, just as with the wire artist who pushes himself too far and falls. Shakespeare recognized that an audience can endure only so much before comic relief is required to preserve the life of a story. There is precious little comic relief to be found in this book.
Somehow Mr. Galloway just manages to stay barely within the allowed limits that keep his story from floating quickly downward into the abyss of ludicrous nothingness. This is a book in which anxiety is so pervasive as to nearly bring the story over the line of reality. A large part of the thrill of this book is that the author manages, like his high wire artist character, to stay just inside the bounds that avoid disaster. It is not an easy discipline.
As Salvo Ursari carefully steps through life, starting as an Hungarian gypsy and ending as something of an American circus super star, he and his family embroil the reader into most, if not every strength, weakness, and emotion known to mankind. The loyalty and prejudices of the group; love and hatred; jealousy and attachment; carelessness and curiosity; pride and humility; bravery and cowardice; fear and courage; simple family life and corporate politics; strength and frailty; pain and joy; and of course life and death are all found in the lives of his characters.
This is a story. A story of life, a story of stories. Truth is revealed, sometimes sharply and sometimes vaguely. As specific events unfold one always knows what is coming yet the story remains an intriguing mystery. A person might ask upon finishing the story "What was that all about?' at the same time there is likely to be a sense of gratitude for having read it and for the author having written it. Very entertaining.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Soaring, September 19, 2003

By 

Kate McKinley (Nashville, TN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: ASCENSION (Hardcover)

I simply couldn't put this book down. Salvo Ursari is a rom wire walker who performs in the circus. The novel opens with him walking between the towers of the world trade center, and this one scene is so heart stopping, so well written that I was actually sweating. I bought the book for my daughter and she loved it too.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thrilling!, April 9, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: ASCENSION (Hardcover)

I love this book.

I recently heard Mr. Galloway on the CBC talking about his writing and reading from this book. I usually don't buy hardcover books, but I was in the bookstore browsing for my nephew's birthday and I thought I should check out Ascension. The cover is beautiful, but the inside is even better! I started reading the first chapter, part of which I had heard on the radio earlier. He hooked me. I bought the book for my nephew and thought I could read it before I send it back east. Well, I read it, but couldn't give it up. I bought another copy to send!

What makes it so good? The characters--Salvo, oh how I love Salvo. He breaks my heart. The stories. What happens. One of the things I love about this, is that you can see everything so vividly, but he never uses really poet language. The story is told simply and beautifully.

I was haunted by the people in this book. Ascension is a very special story, full of special people. I HIGHLY recommend you purchase this book. You will fall in love.