The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all: Welcome to The Ministry of Time, the exhilarating debut novel by Kaliane Bradley.
In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats” from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.
She is tasked with working as a “bridge”: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as “1847” or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,” “Spotify,” and “the collapse of the British Empire.” But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.
Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.
An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, The Ministry of Time asks: What does it mean to defy history, when history is living in your house? Kaliane Bradley’s answer is a blazing, unforgettable testament to what we owe each other in a changing world.
For the Reading Challenge(s):
2025 52 Book Club Reading Challenge (Prompt #TBD)
The Reason
I was intrigued by the premise, and it was also a buddy read which motivated me to read it sooner.
The Quotes
“Life is a series of slamming doors. We make irrevocable decisions every day. A twelve-second delay, a slip of the tongue, and suddenly your life is on a new road.”
“Belief has very little to do with rationale. Why demand a map for uncharted territory?”
“You can’t trauma-proof life, and you can’t hurt-proof your relationships. You have to accept you will cause harm to yourself and others. But you can also fuck up, really badly, and not learn anything from it except that you fucked up. It’s the same with oppression. You don’t gain any special knowledge from being marginalized. But you do gain something from stepping outside your hurt and examining the scaffolding of your oppression.”
“Everything that has ever been could have been prevented, and none of it was. The only thing you can mend is the future.”
My Thoughts
I had high hopes for this book but initial reviews had me tempering my expectations. Even then, I continued hoping that it might turn out to be a good read after all but I was disappointed.
The one good thing I can say about the book is that I really enjoyed the banter between Gore and the narrator. Other than that, I don’t feel like I ever got to know the characters deeper, nor the narrator’s relationships with them. None of the characters got fleshed out enough, and I just didn’t care about them. I also thought it was weird that we saw a lot of Arthur and Margaret but not their bridges, and yet the narrator as Gore’s bridge hangs out with them a lot. It felt convenient to have this set cast of characters while the others hardly ever made an appearance.
The philosophizing was interesting at first but got more and more tedious. It’s funny that I loved the banter and the jokes, but didn’t much like the rest of the writing. The ending felt rushed and incomplete, almost like a DNF by the author, and I didn’t even care at that point.
It feels so mean to say all of that, but I genuinely did hope to like it and I am disappointed. I liked the idea and the beginning felt so promising but I feel like it didn’t live up to its potential. The whole bit with not telling the narrator’s name also felt unnecessary, there wasn’t any reason or meaning for it. The whole thing felt pointless and I don’t know how to feel about the book.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
Aw, I’d seen so much initial hype about this, but nobody I follow actually seems to have really loved it. I initially kinda hung back and I guess I’ll get it out of the library if I read it at all!
I’ve been curious about this one, but not sure if I was going to make the time to read it or not. I think I’ve seen it at my library, so maybe one of these days I’ll check it out from there. Thanks for the review!