#The Museum of Human History

[anosrepasi]

Book Review: The Museum of Human History by Rebekah Bergman

The Museum of Human History is Bergman's debut novel, having been released only a month ago as of Sept 2023 and is a relatively quick read at 241 pages. Summarized in a few words: it's strikingly similar to being unintentionally hit on the mouth, no harm intended but the impact is there nonetheless. I'd give it 4.5/5.

in a few more words:

This is a novel where you don't love the characters, but you'll still cry for them. There's no purely favored characters here and they are all ugly in their own ways, but its the flaws of the characters and the personal tragedies they experience that really drive deep the impact of their story. This is a book about grief. It's a book about remembering and knowing your loss, rather than forgetting the loss.

At it's core, its a very simple book. The cast of characters extends to roughly 15-20 at most, they cycle in and out of book from start to finish. The breadth of individuals scenes and moments in the book is also strikingly limited. Bergman builds up her story through palimpsest, revisiting the scenes from earlier chapters in later chapters from another characters view point. She builds up the emotion of the story through the precise use of poetic prose, packing more punch with some of her two sentence lines than many of her paragraphs.

This is not a book you will "like" or feel good about having finished, it ends leaving many characters feeling unresolved, but much like the central theme of grief- that's kind of the point and should not be seen as a flaw to the narrative.

For a debut novel it's impressive, clunky, definitely clunky in some spots that don't hold the same attention as other chapters, but over all it's a great example of writing a harrowing story that can cause tears with a very very simple toolbox of scenes and characters.

It is also, in my opinion, one of those novels that demands a reread at a later point in time once you've seen the complete story. Spoilers following, but there's two specific narrative threads that make a reread make the cohesive story all the more impactful.

The first is that Bergman has enough clues for the reader to know exactly what the algae is and what it'll do from chapter 4. The clues are all their and in my first reading I completely glossed over them all until later in the book when Bergman starts making the connections far more explicit. But when you do connect them, it completely changes the scope of the book. Naomi spends one paragraph wondering about "how much destruction she helped bring in, unwittingly," and at the time of that sentence it's played out as being overblown, an overzealous statement of an environmentally minded person before she realizes the truth. Then you read the whole novel and realize that she actually did exactly what she feared- but if she lived to see it might not have cared? Because the impacts were mostly human centered rather than the literal destruction of the environment she cared about. Which is awful, but is a pretty consistent theme in the entire novel. The characters care and they love, but that love constantly seems to be overshadowed by their apathy or their pain, and how in being unable to accept what they love with pain they lose it completely instead.

The second narrative thread of interest is Evangeline and Mauve and their shift from mirror images/defined set of twins to being considered an individual and the individual's ghost. Especially considering that the title of ghost seems to get passed back and forth between the characters. I got caught in this thread with one of the side character's Dr.Dean mentioning running into Naomi on the beach and "She was with her daughter." Both girls were present in that scene, but in memory they've already been reduced to one. I'm sure there's multiple occasions where this happens in the book and I find the tension between one very living child who is a shadow to her comatose static sister and vise versa over and over to be incredibly captivating.

Overall, if you enjoy poetic prose, lots of grief, and a healthy dash of environmental and medical science fiction? Chances are you'll enjoy this book, even if enjoy feels like the wrong word here.

[artifacts-and-arthropods]

2,300-Year-Old Plush Bird from the Altai Mountains of Siberia, c.400-300 BCE: this figure was crafted with a felt body and reindeer-fur stuffing, all of which remains intact

This plush bird was sealed within the frozen barrows of Pazyryk, Siberia, for more than two millennia, where a unique microclimate enabled it to be preserved. The permafrost ice lense formation that runs below the barrows provided an insulating layer, preventing the soil from heating during the summer and allowing it to quickly freeze during the winter; these conditions produced a separate microclimate within the stone walls of the barrows themselves, thereby aiding in the preservation of the artifacts inside.

This is just one of the many well-preserved artifacts that have been found at Pazyryk. These artifacts are attributed to the Scythian/Altaic cultures.

Currently housed at the Hermitage Museum.

[judgingbooksbycovers]

​The Museum of Human History: A Novel

By Rebekah Bergman.

[theancientwayoflife]

~ Bundle of Hair Extensions.

Date: ca. 2114-1502 B.C.

Period: Old Kingdom-early New Kingdom; 16th-18th Dynasty

Medium: Human hair, linen

▪︎ From the source: These hair extensions would have been placed in a tomb for use in the afterlife. In this world, Egyptians used extensions to make their wigs or natural hair thicker and more attractive, just as people do today. The reliefs in this case show hairdressers adding extensions like these to the hair or wig of Queen Neferu.

[canisalbus]

Who's taller machete or vasco

They should be about the same height. If you take away his heels (and I advise against it), Machete is a tiny bit shorter than Vasco, but then again he has those antenna ears and Vasco doesn't.

In their setting they're slightly above average height at roughly 6'0/180 cm.

[365filmsbyauroranocte]

The Holdovers (Alexander Payne, 2023)

[thatshowthingstarted]

Sculpture of the Minotaur, Found in Plaka, Athens, Greece, 1-300 CE, 

Marble, H 73 cm. 

© National Archaeological Museum, Athens

[perplexingly]

Me and who

[entropy404]

Parmiggiani, Claudio. 1999. Venere Di Montreal (Venus of Montreal). Sculpture. Montreal, QC. Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

[tom-tom-art]

Can’t believe that it’s already my second year anniversary for posting on this blog, anyway here is a complete lineup of the main characters

[andrewckeeper]

LIDMF AI "Predator, asistiendo a un acuerdo planetario junto a los representantes del planeta tierra en Flandes, 1412. Este acuerdo implica la libre circulación de Predators en el planeta tierra, así como la obtención de trofeos humanos de cantidad limitada y estipulada en este contrato. Los Predators prometen no destruir el planeta tierra a cambio, con la posibilidad de suministro propio de tecnología alienígena en un futuro"

[thefunnythingaboutpeople]

the mortifying ordeal of admitting you do want to be loved vs. the mortifying ordeal of not wanting people to pity you or feel bad for you vs. the mortifying ordeal of wanting to reciprocate affection but being useless vs. the mortifying ordeal of being careless with others and actually feeling bad vs. the mortifying ordeal of being perceived as vulnerable at all.

[geraldofallon]

Fallen London Travel Guide:

The Museum of Prelapsarian History

The Museum of Prelapsarian History is London’s preeminent historical institution. The past is best known as that segment of time that is entirely more popular, yet no less treacherous, than the shrinking future or the ever-stretching present.

[ghostopossumlives]

i miss when restaurants had a bunch of old objects and posters, and plaques all over the walls. It was like eating in a museum and was so inspiring

[semiotomatics]

think i found a fake georgia o'keeffe painting lol

[softquietsteadylove]

Hi! Can you please do the eternal/human au but with thena being human and gil as the eternal this time, please? Your stories are so good!

Thena somewhat glanced to her right as someone else also sat down at the museum bench. She was looking up at one of her favourite relics--an old tablet potentially depicting one of the earliest examples of The Epic of Gilgamesh. She sighed. "Is this really about you?"

He sighed, his hands in the pockets of his black bomber jacket. "It's not the real story. Just something Sprite made up to make me sound like a jerk."

Thena looked up at the tablet again. "The Tyrant King in one of humanity's earliest tales, but you go by Gil?"

He shrugged his massive shoulders. "It's easier than Gilgamesh."

Thena looked at him more properly. She was very familiar with the face of the apparently immortal man next to her. Of course, she had thought he was a very mortal, very human person, just like herself. She had thought he was sweet, if a little shy, and that he just had a special interest in the history of the ancient world.

A very human man who had asked her out, and she had said yes.

"Were you okay?" Gilgamesh asked her more quietly, even given the echously silent exhibit. "Did anything happen close to here?"

"No," she admitted just as secretively. She looked at her hands on her lap over her pencil skirt. "We felt some tremors, but I suppose you took care of things at the epicentre."

Gilgamesh squirmed in his seat.

She had been watching the news, knowing that he was closer to the centre of the city at the farmer's market. The footage was shaky, and the world was acclimating to strange and wild events more and more rapidly. But still, seeing some deviant beast running around London was certainly a shock.

Even more so when the news footage seemed to capture the blurry image of an incredibly strong looking man, literally punching said monster straight through the skull. His face was still a mystery, but he didn't have the average build, certainly. And Thena had known right away that it was Gil.

"Are you a wizard?"

"Pfft, no," he scoffed, waving his hand in the air to dismiss it. "We've seen those guys pop up all over the place, but I wouldn't call what we do 'magic' in any way."

"Then what do you call it?"

Her sharp question landed as intended, and he sighed again. He turned somewhat on the opposite side of the bench from her. She eyed him. "Cosmic Energy."

"So you're an alien?"

"Uh, I guess I don't have a better word for it," he made a face, finally pulling his hands out of his pockets to fidget. He scratched at the hair on his chin. "Eternals is what we're called, uh, officially--I guess. We've been on earth for..."

They both looked up at the tablet again, describing the strength and might of 'Gilgamesh' the tyrant.

He rolled his eyes, "I guess you know, give or take a thousand years."

Thena did look at him more now, as opposed to glaring at him from the corner of her eye. He looked truly contrite, and she knew that he wasn't particularly comfortable with little white lies. Apparently larger ones were more necessary though. "So when you said you could 'really picture yourself' in the battle of Troy, or the siege of Alexandria-"

"I mean we couldn't be everywhere at once," he excused for himself, his smile convincing neither of them. He gave it up rather quickly, sagging again. "But, uh, yeah."

They fell into silence, Gil in particular struggling for what to say next. Thena looked around the museum. She had always been so entrenched in history from all over the globe. The museum felt more like home than her cold and neglected one bedroom flat ever did. And when she had first thought Gil was quite like a walking historic encyclopedia - like a walking piece of history - perhaps she hadn't been so far off.

"So," she started in what she hoped wasn't too bitter a tone of voice, "why talk to me?"

Maybe it didn't work, because Gilgamesh certainly looked like she had screamed and slapped him across the face.

"Or do you make a habit of chatting up humans?" she added, and that part was more acerbic. This wasn't even about their relationship, or the lie of who he was at his core, or even his species.

"Thena," he pleaded, sounding like she had stabbed him through the heart. Would that even kill him?

But she did feel bad. Against her better judgement, she regretted that she had hurt his feelings. She huffed, mostly at herself, "I would think befriending humans would be dangerous for you."

"It can be."

She looked at the honest confession in time to see the sad slouch in his posture.

"We outlive basically everything, and we have to move pretty often, especially with wifi and phones and stuff, now. We don't usually get to really meet or get to know people anymore."

Gil had said Eternals, plural, and she had heard him discuss a few names like 'Sprite' or 'Kingo' before, implying he had some kind of kin or at least some of his own as friends. She didn't know these other Eternals, but knowing what of Gilgamesh she did, she had to imagine that it was hard for him.

Gil was sweet, and charismatic and gentle. And he seemed to genuinely love getting to hold the door open for people, or helping someone elderly with their bags or petting stray cats. He seemed to thrive most when he was surrounded by life, no matter how fragile or temporary it was--how mortal it was.

"I ended up here to keep my sister some company after," Gil slipped his hands back into his pockets, a sign of uncomfortability in both mortals and immortals, evidently. "She and her husband had a split, I guess you could say. I didn't want her to be alone, so I moved here a few years ago. It was just going to be for a decade or so, then maybe we'd go our separate ways again or maybe we'd move on somewhere else together."

Just a decade or so, he said.

"But then," he looked at her with a soft smile, and unfortunately it still made her heart skip. "I met you."

She forced herself to frown at that.

"I didn't mean to," he confessed, and she wasn't sure if that made it better or worse. "Sersi told me all about the museum here, and to see all the stuff people have gotten right or wrong over the years. She met some human, which I told her not to. I guess I can't really say anything about it now, though."

He truly did sound like a brother disapproving of his sister's boyfriend. And he truly didn't have any leg to stand on now, either. "Was it because of Sersi-"

"No, no," he shook his head and looked at her all soft eyed again. "It's not because of anything. It was...it was because of your eyes."

"My eyes?" she felt the need to repeat aloud. It sounded like a cheesy pickup line, or something from a tawdry romance novel. But she supposed that if Gilgamesh had heightened senses, perhaps he would be able to discern her eye colour from an unreasonable distance.

"I used to look out over the water all the time," he recounted, even turning to look at a painting on another wall. "My favourites were always really calm and green and sparkly."

Damn this man and his charming words.

He tilted his head back in her direction. "I was just gonna ask you some dumb question to chat a little and then leave. But then you got so passionate when I asked you the wrong thing on purpose."

She pursed her lips faintly. He had - deliberately? - asked her about the 'Minerva' statue they had, and where in Greece it had been made. It had immediately irked her that he had gotten the Roman name for her right, then the location also right, but in direct conflict with the other half of his question. Surely if he knew the name Minerva, he knew that was not what they called her in Greece--Athens, of all places!

Then he had asked her name, and she had to explain that Thena was not some nickname but her actual, legal name. The thought had charmed him and...and they kept talking from there.

He had picked just the right topic to get her to unload her entire master's degree of knowledge upon him, and he had eagerly listened to all of it. Most would flee partway through, but he had happily followed her around basically the whole floor as she recounted the many details and secrets and misinformation about her expertise.

And he had come back the next day for more.

"I loved hearing you talk about it," he whispered, moving a little closer now that he felt he could. "You were so passionate about it. I could really remember some of those times, and what I couldn't remember, I felt like I could imagine with how you described it."

"Thena, I just loved talking with you. I loved asking you silly questions, I loved you correcting me about stuff. I especially loved when we got interrupted that one time for your real job, and you offered me your card in case I had more questions."

He had pretended to have more questions. And they did actually end up texting that way. And then making plans that weren't just him showing up at her workplace. And then those plans became dates. They'd had five dinner dates and two lunches, and two coffees, although one of those had still been under the guise of their shared love of history.

"I wanted to get to know you more."

Even if he knew he would inevitably have to leave her life in a matter of months, if not years. It was a petty and bitter reaction, but maybe that was the truest way she felt about it; that he would have had to abandon her sooner than later. He thought those consequences were worth the risk, and she wasn't sure how to feel about it.

Because she didn't want to lose him, thinking about it now. And the fact that she now knew that she would have to no matter the future was a slap in the face of her own.

"No matter how soon you would have had to leave London for a small lifetime?" she accused, using the adrenaline in her system to drown out the pain she was feeling.

But Gil didn't turn away from her scathing demand. He looked at her with those eyes that she had always seen as holding more than he ever said within. He clasped his hands in front of him, resting on his knees. "After meeting you, I didn't know if I could."

Thena looked down at her lap again as well. It had been a few months since she'd met Gil. And if what he said was true, he hadn't intended on staying in London long, let alone permanently. She wasn't sure how long he had been here before meeting her, either. But Sersi's relationship with Dane was no more than a year old, by now.

"Sersi asked me," he laughed dryly. "She asked if I knew what I was getting myself into, which was rich, coming from her."

He sounded exactly like a protective brother.

"I said I totally had it under control," he laughed at himself, which was something she - foolishly - found so charming about him. "No worries, y'know, so I made a friend, so what? It would be good for me. Next thing I know, I bought my first phone just so I could text you."

She stared. "You didn't have a phone before?"

He waved his hand dismissively again, and maybe she could see why a few of his mannerisms really seemed more like that of an old man than a gentleman in his late forties at most. "Sersi's been trying to convince me. She's so addicted to hers it's ridiculous. She even made an instagram! I told her she would just have to delete it in a few years but-!"

Thena held back a laugh as he cut himself off. "Should I feel honoured, or even more betrayed?"

It had been half joking and half serious, but Gil took on that sad, wounded expression again. "You have every right to feel that way. But Thena, I swear on all the time I have left: I chose to stay, so I could be close to you. I wanted to spend whatever time we could have together...with you."

It was a humbling admission. She didn't quite want to imagine the heavier implications of that. The idea of Gil never aging while she slowly became an old woman beside him. Or did he have some kind of magic, or Cosmic Energy rather, that would help with that? It sounded like Sersi had accepted the consequences of her dalliance with a human.

Gil had asked her if she would want to go to dinner with Sersi and Dane as a couple. Although now all she could think of was the two Eternals smiling on as their humans chatted away about trivial human things.

"Thena, please," Gil slid closer again, taking her hand in his. "I know I sound insane, and I don't blame you if you say you want nothing to do with me after this. But I never lied when I told you liked you, or that I wanted to spend the rest of my days listening to you talk about South American architecture, or Grecian olive harvesting, or the Guptan Empire."

Thena squeezed her eyes shut, feeling tears in them. Gil swooped forward pulling her closer to him, always eager to comfort. He pressed his lips to her temple.

"I'm so sorry, sweetheart. I never meant for you to get hurt."

She believed that. Because Gil would never be capable of wishing harm on her. He probably wasn't capable of really wishing it on anyone, except maybe Sersi's ex-husband. She wouldn't have believed him capable of causing harm either, until the news today.

"If I could trade the rest of my forever for one more day with you, I would."

Maybe that was easy to say for someone who really did have a forever. She looked at him, wild in the eyes.

"Sorry," he whispered, looking away from her. He gave her cheek another kiss before releasing her slowly. "I'll give you time to think. If...if you don't want to talk anymore, I'll understand. But if I don't hear from you in a few days, can I at least come check if you're okay?"

She nodded, completely without the words to ask him to stay. He took it though, nodding back and then walking towards the far exit of the museum floor. She could hear his steps the whole way, although her heart felt like it was pounding at the inside of her skull.

She had a lot to think about. Aliens and monsters and immortal Eternals who had been on Earth for thousands of years. Did this have anything to do with how half of the earth's population vanished in the blink of an eye those years ago? Did they also blip? Could they?

She had so much to think about, so much to worry about. And the only person she wanted to talk to about it all just left.