The Ministry of Time

Author: Kaliane Bradley
Published: 2024
Target Audience: Adults (Appropriate 17+)

A few months from now, an unnamed British civil servant is offered a lucrative job in a mysterious new government ministry. She learns the government has discovered time travel, and that a number of 'Expats' have been brought from different points in history to the present-day to test the possibilities of time travel. Her role is to be a 'Bridge' - a liaison, a cultural interpreter, and housemate - to the Expat from 1847, Graham Gore.

As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin's lost expedition to the Arctic, so he's rather disoriented to find himself nearly 200 years from anything he knows and living with an unmarried woman who regularly exposes her calves. But the Victorian polar explorer is nothing if not resilient, and he quickly adjusts to peculiar new concepts such as washing machines, germ theory, Spotify, and the collapse of the British Empire.

Over the course of a year, she and Graham navigate modern life together along with the other Bridges and Expats. And as the months slip by, our unnamed narrator and Graham gradually move from awkward strangers to friends, and then something more.

But as the true shape of the project that brought her and Graham together begins to emerge, she will be forced to face her role in it, and what she is willing to disregard to achieve her own ends…

Excerpt 1:

'What have you done to the Thames?' he demanded.

'You did it, actually. The Victorians. Cleaned it up and - embanked it, I think the word is? Congratulations for missing the Great Stink of 1858.'

'"The Victorians." You know, Queen Victoria was on the throne for less than a third of my life.'

'Pretty significant third, though. Got your commission. Got that very foxy daguerreotype taken.'

'I assume, by "foxy", you are referring to the size of my snout in that portrait.'

'"Foxy" in this context means - eh - alluring.'

'Can you swim?'

'What?'

'If I push you in the river, will it be murder?'

Review:

Coming May 2024, 'The Ministry of Time' is a fascinating, thought-provoking, and stand-out novel from Anglo-Cambodian writer and debut author Kaliane Bradley. It is a great mix of the light-hearted fun of watching historical figures interact with the absurdities of the modern world, along with a more nuanced examination of the unresolved legacy of colonialism, classism, gender roles, and more. The story is comprised of snapshot moments between Graham Gore and our narrator as the two slowly connect, their interactions with the other Expats and Bridges, and snippets of our main character reporting to her superiors as a government agent. These interactions are witty and immersive, laying an affectionate foundation to the developing relationship between the two leads. These moments are also contemplative and ladened with grief, loss, and dislocation; Graham gradually learns about the fate of his shipmates and the atrocities of the last two centuries, and the narrator reflects on her own generational trauma and being perpetually "other" as an almost white-passing, mixed race-woman. Through this multifaceted lens, the novel ruminates on the nature of power, the experience of displaced people, and on hope for the next generation.

'The Ministry of Time' is a cross-genre tale that swings from light-hearted whimsy, to historical discourse, to simmering romantic tension, to political spy thriller, and back again. Some readers may find this changeable style too jarring, the length of each scene too fleeting, and the encounters with the secondary characters too brief to fully flesh them out. However, framing the story as the narrator's recount of her time with Graham Gore cultivates an engrossing sense of impermanency that steadily raises the tension with each allusion to mistakes, unheeded warnings, and opportunities now forever lost. The evolving relationship between our narrator and Graham binds the various narrative aspects together, and presents a slowburn, tantalising romance that will enthral readers. Yet their relationship is tempered by a deliberate lack of an honest, unguarded connection between them; It is difficult to develop a genuine friendship - or anything more - when both parties know that everything about them is being recorded, tracked, and reported. As Graham was unwillingly taken from his era and brought to the future, there exists an inherent inequality where Graham is a test subject and she, his surveillant. To become Graham's Bridge, our narrator researched every detail of his life and death, and even read his posthumously published personal letters. She has access to his ministry tests results, internet records, and knowledge of all his movements, placing her and Graham on an uneven footing from the outset.

This power imbalance permeates the story as the novel flits between the expats adjusting to the twenty-first century, the main character's feelings towards Graham, and the political intrigue plot. The disoriented balance of story elements mimics the narrator's experience as she slowly becomes more and more questionable in her actions and justifications. Through her perspective, 'The Ministry of Time' creates a superb exploration of the concessions and missteps people make to hold onto a sense of control and surety. Of trying to direct the narrative. Of subconsciously and obstinately ignoring warning bells and morality checks in the tunnel-visioned pursuit of a dream and an obsession. By drawing on references to Franklin's lost expedition, the Khmer Rouge, the Holocaust, and other historical events, 'The Ministry of Time' explores how all too easily we can find ourselves treading that awful line between self-preservation and complicity. We, the audience, want our main character to make the right, heroic choices, only to witness her act so definitively human. This makes for an unsettling reading experience as the narrator's reasoning and decisions become all too frighteningly relatable.

Excerpt 2:

'Have you watched much old Hollywood stuff? I think you'd really like it.'

'What is "Hollywood"?'

I smiled. It was so hard not to treat the expats like blank slates onto which I might write my opinions. [...] There was something hauntingly young about all of them. A scarcity of cultural context that felt teenaged, and I didn't know if my fascination with it was maternal or predatory. Every time I gave Graham a book, I was trying to shunt him along a story I'd been telling myself all my life.

'The Ministry of Time' is an emotionally-arresting, tumultuous rollercoaster of a book that is simultaneously hilarious, unnerving, and impossible to put down. I absolutely recommend it.