Book Review: The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

About the book

A civil servant is offered a lucrative job in a mysterious new government ministry gathering 'expats' from across history to test whether time-travel is feasible. Her role is to work as a 'bridge': living with, supporting and monitoring expat '1847' - Commander Graham Gore, a former Victorian polar explorer.

Gore, an adventurer by trade, soon adjusts to this bizarre new world of washing machines, feminism and Spotify; and during a long, sultry summer the pair move from awkwardness to friendship to something more.

But as the true shape of the project that brought them together begins to emerge, Gore and the bridge are forced to confront their past choices and imagined futures.

Can love triumph over the histories that have shaped them? And how do you defy that history when it is living in your house?

Why we love it

A glorious mix of science fiction, spy thriller and romance with a sprinkling of comedy added for good measure!

Humanity has discovered time travel and, in true bureaucratic fashion, has entrusted it to the British civil service, specifically to a shadowy department known only as the Ministry. 

To determine whether time travel is safe for use, the Ministry retrieves five individuals from various points in history, each presumed dead in their own time in order to monitor their physical and mental acclimation to the modern world.

Told from the perspective of an unnamed civil servant employed as a 'bridge' for Commander Graham Gore of Franklin's lost polar expedition, the novel follows the evolving relationship between the two as they gradually uncover the true purpose behind the Ministry's secretive experiments.

One of the aspects I loved most about this book was its exploration of what it means to belong - of here-ness and there-ness. How well can we truly adapt, or be accepted, when uprooted from the time and place we naturally call home? 

One theme that runs continually through the novel is the way language and narrative can be used to define identity and to shape the future: are the time travellers refugees of time, expatriates from a different era, or kidnap victims dragged through time and space without their consent? In reality, they're all three but each definition has very connotations for their future and ours. 

As Kaliane Bradley so eloquently puts it, "History is not a series of causes and effects which may be changed like switching trains on a track. It is a narrative agreement about what has happened and what is happening."

As the book progresses, it becomes clear that there are conflicts within the Ministry on how to shape that narrative - who gets to control the future? 

But in and amongst the action and intrigue, there are moments of humour and romance, as the time travellers adapt, some more successfully than others, to the complexities of modern day life, ideas and love.

Warm, witty, and filled with a cast of characters you’ll wish you could spend more time with, this impeccably researched and imaginative novel is a genuine must-read.