Reviews
“…closely observed” - The New Yorker
“Megan Mayhew Bergman is one of the best authors out there for chronicling our tangled, intimate, complicated relationship to the natural world; her elegant, lyrical prose documents an evolving crisis and our incorrigibly human responses to it…” - Lit Hub
"Quietly wrenching…Bergman masterfully probes the lives of strange, stubborn women and girls, from dissatisfied wives to suspicious, watchful children ... Bergman’s stories are so atmospherically and emotionally rich that they serve as portals into distinct interior worlds ... this collection is distinct and vivid, each story burrowing inside the reader’s brain to leave an indelible mark. As singular as it is atmospheric." - Starred Review, Kirkus
“In a collection perfectly suited for our moment, Bergman examines what remains of what was given to us and suggests how we might move on as the world continues to change around us." - Starred Review, Booklist
“The short stories in Bergman’s collection each create their own kind of weather, like the swampy South Carolina plantation of “Indigo Run” and the stifling chill of a human-scale New York terrarium in “Workhorse.” Nearly all of the interludes touch on climate as they follow women trying to make their way through systems in which they’re complicit but not completely in charge. In “A Taste for Lionfish,” Lily is sent to stormy coastal North Carolina to persuade the locals to start eating invasive species as part of a job for a conservation nonprofit. “You’re trying to tell these poor folks how to fix a rich folks’ problem,” one of the locals tells Lily, as Bergman confronts an ugly truism of environmentalism: Some earnest outsider probably isn’t going to come in and serve up the easy solution, and those most affected are usually the least to blame.” - The Atlantic, As Climate Changes, So Does Fiction
Birds of a Lesser Paradise (2012) and Almost Famous Women (2016)
“We want stories to stir our desires. We also want them to lead us to places we don’t recognize and build us a temporary residence there. Bergman provides alluring glimpses into the strangeness, the ruthlessness, of the animal kingdom.” - New York Times, on Birds of a Lesser Paradise
“Lovely and heartbreaking.” - Anjelica Huston on Almost Famous Women
“Atmospheric…compelling…The female sanctuary she constructs out of her short stories is too littered with bad-girl paraphernalia — cigarettes, champagne bottles, smashed-up motorcycles and morphine needles — to make kneeling in adoration comfortable.” - Maureen Corrigan, NPR, on Almost Famous Women