After nearly drowning, eight-year-old Maeve Wilhelm falls into a strange comatose state. As years pass, it becomes clear that Maeve is not physically aging. A wide cast of characters finds themselves pulled toward Maeve, each believing that her mysterious “sleep” holds the answers to their life’s most pressing questions. As Maeve remains asleep, the characters grapple with a mysterious new technology and medical advances that promise to ease anxiety and end pain, but instead cause devastating side effects.
...a startling novel about memory, desire, and learning to age with grace ... A cautionary tale about reckoning with the present, future, and the past, The Museum of Human History is a winsome allegorical novel.
Breathtaking and poignant ... Bergman's lyrical prose and keen character insight infuse the novel with near-constant moments of emotional enlightenment. The short, fragmented narrative structure masterfully intertwines not only the lives of its haunting characters but also a collection of themes that, despite their abstract weight, all feel emotionally grounded in Bergman's hypnotic reality.
Bergman’s novel raises some big existential questions: how does a person preserve their life after death? Should we dare to try? Trying might cause us to become consumed by the pursuit and miss the experience of life itself. Instead, Bergman relentlessly argues that sharing life with those around us is what matters most. Memories exist for other people after those who made them leave or pass away. It’s tempting to read Bergman’s novel as in favor of the romantic preservation of the past exemplified by the Museum of Human History and against the hubris of preserving for the future. But the novel is asking another question. In the face of centuries and epochs, we retain so little. Is there a third option—neither romantic nor technocratic—for holding onto the past? It would be reductive to say that The Museum of Human History wants us to “live in the present,” but in many ways this is what her characters glimpse when they truly encounter one another.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay[/caption]
