The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
It’s becoming common these days for books to have a sticker attached proclaiming them part of a celebrity book club such as Oprah’s or Reese Witherspoon’s. The book I recommend is a Good Morning America Book Club pick and also what the Sci-Fi and Fantasy book club of Eureka Springs is reading.
The thing with book clubs is that one has to read what the group has picked, even if it’s not necessarily a personal choice. I think this is a good thing about book clubs, aside from making friends and finding people to discuss issues big and small (“Should we have pizza this meeting?” “What if AI can provide better companionship than other humans?”) Readers should challenge themselves and expand the authors and ideas they are exposed to by reading recommendations of others. It isn’t guaranteed that you’ll enjoy or even appreciate the book, but it will give you opportunities as a reader.
The Ministry of Time ended up being a novel that kept me engaged and gave me characters and a concept I found intriguing. This is a book that has a pop-literary feel, with lush language and an attempt to intellectually play with the trope of time travel.
The book follows an agent for a newly established Ministry of Time in England, where the British government has a machine that allows for time travelling and they have decided to test it by taking people from the past — but not just any people. They choose individuals who were going to die or disappear, like a main protagonist, Commander Graham Gore, a real person who served on the doomed Franklin arctic expedition.
Gore is known in the Ministry as 1847, because that was the year he disappeared and was presumed dead. In this novel’s reality he was kidnapped and brought to London to live in 2024. He is called an expat, and put into the care of the narrator, the daughter of a Cambodian refugee and a British citizen.
She has spent her life combatting feeling out of place by attempting to control her position in her government job and protect herself with power. She thinks the promotion to being a “bridge” or person in charge of helping a time expat acclimate to the 21st century, is a big step in securing her place in history.
What she doesn’t expect is that living with a handsome Victorian with ideas that are alarming, charming, and disrupted by the loss of everything he knew, will shake the foundations of how she sees herself and her world.
The book explores being a government employee, bureaucratic skullduggery, historic understanding, and the perils of time travel in a way that subverted some time travel motifs and fully embraced others. I cared about several characters and developed complicated feelings towards others, particularly thinking about what motivated them.
I also appreciated that the narrator had a unique perspective of the world and how she was haunted by the history that shaped her family. Many of the side characters have their own interesting histories and the impact of travelling through time was approached from an angle that was innovative and conducive to the important messages the author was exploring.
There were moments that made me chuckle and times I cried (although I admit to being a softy), but I never wanted to put the book down and just give up on it. I had a few issues, one twist in particular was telegraphed from a mile away and the ending was a little ambiguous for my taste (I prefer a clear, happy conclusion) but it was a book that provoked questions and interesting thoughts.
The Minister of Time is a worthwhile read that I am sure will give my book club plenty to discuss at the next meeting. Check it out soon before someone spoils the ending or it gets made into a streaming series. The Eureka Springs Carnegie Library has a copy, but I know that it has a waiting list, so make sure to sign up for it or, if you’re eager to get started, buy yourself a copy.