| Title | Ascension |
| Author | Steven Galloway |
| Publisher | Carroll & Graf, 2003 |
| ISBN | 0786712082, 9780786712083 |
| Length | 288 pages |
Book overview
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.
No preview available - 2003 - 288 pages - Fiction
Reviews
Editorial Review - Kirkus Reviews Copyright (c) VNU Business Media, Inc.
The life story of a high-wire artist, in a US debut from Canadian second-novelist Galloway.Salvo Ursari is a Rom (gypsy). As a nine-year-old in the Hungary of 1919, he watches a gadje (non-Roma) mob burn down the family home; his parents die in the fire, but Salvo escapes to Budapest. These early scenes, interwoven with Romany folk tales, show a resilient culture fighting ethnic oppressors. Everything changes when the teenaged Salvo sees his first wire act and meets the mysterious impresario Tomas Skosa. The latter realizes Salvo is a natural, though he proves a cruel taskmaster. Immobility is the key, says Skosa: "make the wire yours." Thus begins the romance between artist and wire; in a large cast of one-dimensional characters, they are the only two that matter. On the ground Salvo is a dour neurotic; in the air he is the epitome of grace. Not that the ground is all bad: Salvo will have a joyful reunion with siblings he had given up for dead, and they will become part of the act. Eventually, they run afoul of the Gestapo but are saved by a job offer from America's top circus impresario, and enjoy a sensational debut in New York. The huge clan that runs the circus, however, is riddled with feuds; when one of the clan, Anna, falls for and marries Salvo, she is promptly disinherited. But Galloway's attempts to flesh out the Ursaris' acrobatics into a circus novel complete with Big Tent politics are too superficial to work. As for Anna, only years later does she realize the wire complements Salvo in a way she cannot; by now (it's 1959) their twin daughters are part of an eight-member troupe. When the girls die in a too-risky maneuver, Anna's anger with Salvo borders on hate. Later, Salvo himself will meet his end on a wire between the World Trade Center's twin towers.Galloway's high-altitude romance, for all its intensity, is not enough to sustain a full-length novel.
Overview and Review from books.google.com
The life story of a high-wire artist, in a US debut from Canadian second-novelist Galloway.Salvo Ursari is a Rom (gypsy). As a nine-year-old in the Hungary of 1919, he watches a gadje (non-Roma) mob burn down the family home; his parents die in the fire, but Salvo escapes to Budapest. These early scenes, interwoven with Romany folk tales, show a resilient culture fighting ethnic oppressors. Everything changes when the teenaged Salvo sees his first wire act and meets the mysterious impresario Tomas Skosa. The latter realizes Salvo is a natural, though he proves a cruel taskmaster. Immobility is the key, says Skosa: "make the wire yours." Thus begins the romance between artist and wire; in a large cast of one-dimensional characters, they are the only two that matter. On the ground Salvo is a dour neurotic; in the air he is the epitome of grace. Not that the ground is all bad: Salvo will have a joyful reunion with siblings he had given up for dead, and they will become part of the act. Eventually, they run afoul of the Gestapo but are saved by a job offer from America's top circus impresario, and enjoy a sensational debut in New York. The huge clan that runs the circus, however, is riddled with feuds; when one of the clan, Anna, falls for and marries Salvo, she is promptly disinherited. But Galloway's attempts to flesh out the Ursaris' acrobatics into a circus novel complete with Big Tent politics are too superficial to work. As for Anna, only years later does she realize the wire complements Salvo in a way she cannot; by now (it's 1959) their twin daughters are part of an eight-member troupe. When the girls die in a too-risky maneuver, Anna's anger with Salvo borders on hate. Later, Salvo himself will meet his end on a wire between the World Trade Center's twin towers.Galloway's high-altitude romance, for all its intensity, is not enough to sustain a full-length novel.
Overview and Review from books.google.com
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