Review
"With melancholy imagination, Bergman elegantly tackles nothing less than the entire arc of human history. . . . the novel blends fairy tale, philosophy, and shades of literary-futurist classics like Never Let Me Go."
― Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
"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."
― Booklist, Starred Review
"[A] satisfying speculative debut."
― Publishers Weekly
"Bergman is a master at bringing multiple characters to life."
― Wired
"A Frankenstein-esque speculative novel for a youth-obsessed culture."
― NYLON, A Best Book of August
"Takes you on an adventure somewhere just out of the periphery of your imagination."
― Shondaland
"A haunting debut novel full of heartbreak and twisted science."
― The Philadelphia Inquirer
"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."
― Chicago Review of Books, A Must Read Book of August
"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."
― Powell's, Powell's Pick Spotlight
"Magical. . . . A haunting meditation on mortality and memory."
― Locus
"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."
― Tor.com
"Original and compelling."
― Necessary Fiction
"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."
― Shelf Awarenss, Starred Review
"Winsome. . . . a startling novel about memory, desire, and learning to age with grace."
― Foreward Reviews
"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."
― Denver Public Library
"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."
― Samantha Hunt, author of The Unwritten Book
"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."
― Allegra Hyde, author of Eleutheria
"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!"
― Kate Bernheimer, author of Fairy Tale Architecture
"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."
― Tiffany Tsao, author of The Majesties
About the Author
Rebekah Bergman’s fiction has been published in Joyland, Tin House, The Masters Review anthology, and other journals. She lives in Rhode Island with her family.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Not long after the birth of the cloned woolly mammoth, there was a second local scientific breakthrough when a human head was successfully transplanted. Luke thought this was a grotesque advancement: a healthy head and brain from one dying body grafted onto another person’s spinal cord. Nonetheless, you could have a second life now in a new body. That was, if you were lucky and it wasn’t your brain that was killing you.
He thought of Tess’s joke to the surgeon as he read all about the new technology, and Tess added the article to her list of ominous news.
A part of him could see the appeal of it though. If you didn’t think too hard about this stuff, and most people did not, there was a would-be-nice idea of immortality floating around. The city was bustling with the new industry of biotech, and Luke’s client list shifted. Every day brought a new initiative to convince the public that death no longer had to have its constant stranglehold over life.
Sometimes, when he was working late on a project, it seemed impossible that a tiny mass of cells could destroy someone. After all, We Live in the Future Now, as all the ad copy he was drafting would claim. Other times, he felt the pulse of his and Tess’s outsider status. He could picture himself with his artifact of a camera and Tess with her archaic illness and it seemed obvious that the future had gone on without them; that they belonged, instead, to a more terrifying and primitive time.
There were rumors of another medical advancement; a procedure that would stop the body from aging. Luke came to the office one day and this was the only thing his coworkers wanted to talk about. They speculated about how much it would cost and when they would know if Genesix, the company developing it, would sign on with them.
Luke was quiet, listening.
