Publishers Weekly
06/26/2023
Bergman’s cluttered yet satisfying speculative debut centers on an algae-derived drug that stops physical aging but comes with dire side effects, including memory loss and a shorter life span. Genesix head researcher Naomi Wilhelm hopes to uncover the corporation’s secrets about Prosyntus, but she accidentally dies while swimming off an island where the algae is sourced. Shortly after, Naomi’s eight-year-old daughter, Maeve, has an accident at the same place, which puts her in a coma. Now, 25 years into the future, Maeve is still in a coma and hasn’t aged physically. Bergman also delves into the stories of Maeve’s identical twin, Evangeline; Monique Gray, a famous performance artist and former babysitter of the twins; Tess, a terminally ill woman who befriends a young Evangeline and acts as Monique’s immigration officer; and more. By the end, the various characters converge around Maeve on the eve of a deadly earthquake. The cast slips in and out of each other’s lives, a narrative device that Bergman doesn’t always master—the large number of coincidental connections occasionally strains credulity. Still, the characters’ loss and grief are palpable. This will leave readers considering the fallibility of memory and the costs of attempting to preserve one’s youthful appearance. Agent: Alexa Stark, Writers House. (Aug.)
Kate Bernheimer
"Rebekah Bergman’s The Museum of Human History is one of the most agile novels I have read in a long time. It reads like a documentary retold as a dream retold as a mystery novel. What a wise, good-hearted debut!"
Samantha Hunt
"Rebekah Bergman’s exploration of our strange biologies reads like the irresistible beating hands of time. This daughter of Mary Shelley delights and excites the border between story and science as she doles out questions that both haunt and expose our obsessions."
Powell's Pick Spotlight Powell's
"Aches with grief & humanity & the beauty it’s possible to find in the world, even if your vision has become crowded with loss. Astounding. . . . assured & deeply felt."
Wired
"Bergman is a master at bringing multiple characters to life."
Shondaland
"Takes you on an adventure somewhere just out of the periphery of your imagination."
Denver Public Library
"A startling novel about memory, desire, and learning to age with grace. . . . Offers readers what we as individuals can rarely see on our own, the interconnectedness that hums between every human being."
Necessary Fiction
"Original and compelling."
Starred Review Booklist
"A startlingly assured debut. . . . Similar to Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad. . . . a tightly constructed, wonderfully written, utterly original, and astoundingly good novel."
Starred Review Shelf Awarenss
"A breathtaking and poignant story about pain, obsession, and the passage of time. . . . Bergman's lyrical prose and keen character insight infuse the novel with near-constant moments of emotional enlightenment."
Tor.com
"Tells the story of a girl who falls into a dreamlike state for years, never aging as she does so, and explores the ways this affects the people around her and the larger world."
A Must Read Book of August Chicago Review of Books
"Impressive. . . . reminiscent of another literary fantasy icon Kevin Brockmeier, as the prose and the subtle interconnections between its characters rise to the level of sublime."
Locus
"Magical. . . . A haunting meditation on mortality and memory."
Allegra Hyde
"In The Museum of Human History, Rebekah Bergman offers readers what we as individuals can rarely see on our own: the interconnectedness that hums between every human being, the high cost of painlessness and hard truths of our inevitable obsolesce. This is a novel about what we want and also what we can’t escape—a story as heartbreaking as it is seductive."
A Best Book of August NYLON
"A Frankenstein-esque speculative novel for a youth-obsessed culture."
The Philadelphia Inquirer
"A haunting debut novel full of heartbreak and twisted science."
Foreward Reviews
"Winsome. . . . a startling novel about memory, desire, and learning to age with grace."
Tiffany Tsao
"There are no static exhibits or neatly segmented timelines in Bergman’s The Museum of Human History. Here, lives bleed into each other, echoing on decades, centuries, millennia after they end (if they end). A haunting chord of a novel that will hang in the air long after you turn the final page."
Wired
"Bergman is a master at bringing multiple characters to life."
A Most Anticipated Book of 2023 Powell's
"A very literary, heartbreaking, speculative page-turner about the tragedy of memory, and the desire to hold onto the best moments in your life, and the ways life stories are written and re-written as we move through time."
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2023-05-24
A treatment that pauses aging and pain affects an entire city in unforeseen ways in this debut novel.
Maeve Wilhelm is asleep. She’s been asleep for 25 years, since she nearly drowned in a community swimming pool at the age of 8. But Maeve’s sleep is not a coma: She’s breathing on her own and, more importantly, not visibly aging. Hers isn’t the first family tragedy: Maeve’s mother, Naomi, a senior researcher at a biotech company, also drowned under strange circumstances. Naomi’s body was found with a mysterious red rock in her pocket, apparently related to the red algae bloom that appeared off a private beach where her company was conducting top-secret research. This rock, this algae—what does it have to do with Naomi’s death or Maeve’s sleep, which occurred not long after she ingested some of the algae at the closed beach on a dare? How does it connect to Naomi’s biotech work on a procedure designed to pause outward signs of aging as well as numb pain? And what of the Museum of Human History, a local attraction built around caves in which ancient humans—and a single doll, “in a sleeping posture…covered in beautiful red stones”—had once been discovered? Bergman’s novel, structured like a series of concentric circles, ripples out to include a number of characters affected by the anti-aging treatment in some way: a young widower, a performance artist, a museum director, and Maeve’s own identical twin. Each narrative ring reveals unexpected connections among them, images and bits of language that recur, ideas and themes—memory, death, the slippage between the past and the future—that deepen as the novel blends fairy tale, philosophy, and shades of literary-futurist classics like Never Let Me Go.
With melancholy imagination, Bergman elegantly tackles nothing less than the entire arc of human history.
