The Museum of Human History

June 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.

Starred review from June 15, 2023
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.

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Starred review from August 1, 2023
In Bergman's startlingly assured debut, a drowning accident leaves eight-year-old Maeve Willhelm in a mystical eternal coma in which she appears to never physically age. Similar to Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010), this novel is structured as a mosaic, one that moves backwards and forwards in time and across a range of characters to explore many effects of time--forgetting, the unreliability of memory, the effects of addiction, and the slow damage of extraction capitalism. To name just three of a wide cast of characters, Tess is cramming in experiences on her obsessive lists before cancer kills her. Kevin is the son and grandson of people who "discovered" Marks Island, an area containing the remains of an intriguing ancient civilization, and he owns a museum to preserve the memory of this area. Preservation is also the focus of Maeve's father, a pliant and exhausted entomologist. As these characters experience inevitable changes and trials, their lives intersect with Maeve, who does not experience time either physically or mentally. At times a fable, a detective story, and a philosophical exploration of time, the narrative drifts between genres but never quite settles on one. This is a tightly constructed, wonderfully written, utterly original, and astoundingly good novel.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.