THE MEUSEUM OF HUMAN HISTORY
Poets & Writers Magazine|July - August 2023
READING The Museum of Human History felt like listening to a great harmonic hum. After I finished it I found the hum lingering in my ears. Its echo continued for days.
Rebekah Bergman
THE MEUSEUM OF HUMAN HISTORY

Bergman's novel is made up of individual stories, told delicately and vividly, that the reader gradually realizes are the components of a larger narrative. Much like the notes of a chord. Much like the threads of a tapestry. Much like the separate exhibits in a museum. A girl's twin sister falls into a deep slumber and ceases aging. A woman with terminal cancer drives cross-country with her partner to fulfill a dying wish. Ancient human remains are unearthed on an island. In another country, blue corpses lie in open graves. And a breakthrough in youth-preserving technology casts an ominous shadow over everything. These are just some of the intertwined narratives in the novel. Collectively they raise perennial questions of human existence: What is the balance between paying homage to the past and being consumed by it? Between preserving life and living it? Is pain— and the memory of pain-a blessing or a curse?

The Museum of Human History has a distinctively sci-fi feel: Biotech and anti-aging technology play a large role in the novel. Yet the epigraph is drawn from "Little Brier-Rose," the Grimm brothers' version of the Sleeping Beauty narrative. Could you tell us a bit about the novel's blending of science and fairy tale-two things that some people might consider antithetical?

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THE MEUSEUM OF HUMAN HISTORY
Poets & Writers Magazine

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READING The Museum of Human History felt like listening to a great harmonic hum. After I finished it I found the hum lingering in my ears. Its echo continued for days.

time-read
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