The Museum of Human History
若い少女が突然老いないまま眠り続けるという前提から、人間関係の記憶や自己保全への執着を描くデビュー小説。幻想性と現実感の往復が静かな余韻を残す。
作品情報
時間が止まったような眠りのまわりで、家族も他人も少しずつ変わっていく。
Tin Houseから刊行された英語のデビュー長編。溺れかけた少女マーヴが老いないまま眠り続けるなか、周囲の人々は記憶、喪失、若さへの執着を抱えて動き始める。
レビュー要約
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ファンタジーとフィクションの境界をまたぐ語りが上品で、記憶と喪失をめぐる感情の運びが丁寧だ。静かな題材なのに、読み終えると輪郭がはっきり残る。
書籍情報
- 出版社
- Tin House
- 発売日
- 2023-08-01
- ページ数
- 256ページ
- 言語
- 英語
- サイズ
- 14.05 x 1.65 x 21.49 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9781953534910
- ISBN-10
- 1953534910
- 価格
- 3432 JPY
- カテゴリ
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Literary
“This daughter of Mary Shelley delights and excites the border between story and science.”―Samantha Hunt “A novel about what we want and also what we can’t escape.”―Allegra Hyde “A haunting chord of a novel that will hang in the air long after you turn the final page.”―Tiffany Tsao “Reads like a documentary retold as a dream retold as a mystery novel. What a wise, good-hearted debut!”―Kate Bernheimer 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: Kevin Marks, a museum owner obsessed with preservation; Monique Gray, a refugee and performance artist; Lionel Wilhelm, an entomologist who dreamed of being an astrophysicist; and Evangeline Wilhelm, Maeve’s identical twin. 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. Weaving together speculative elements and classic fables, and exploring urgent issues from the opioid epidemic to the hazards of biotech to the obsession with self-improvement and remaining forever young, Rebekah Bergman’s The Museum of Human History is a brilliant and fascinating novel about how time shapes us, asking what—if anything—we would be without it.
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.
レビュー
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kept my interest but hard to remember all details—purposeful?
As I wrote the title review I realize that maybe it’s on purpose that it was hard to recall all the details as I read this book. It kept my interest and I like the authors style of writing.
関連する文学賞
- フィリップ・K・ディック賞 第42回（2023年） ・特別賞