Some books really pack a punch, stuffing so much into their pages that it’s difficult to know where to start in a review. Kaliane Bradley‘s The Ministry of Time is one such book. The endorsements plastered across the cover and inside pages describe it as everything from clever, witty, charming and wonderful, to brilliant, thrilling, comedic, whimsical, off-beat and a new classic. And every single one of those endorsements is correct. This is a book full of so many themes, so many charms, and so many insights. It truly is the sort of book that can truly be appreciated upon multiple rereads.
Part time-travel spy thriller, part love story, and part contemporary drama, The Ministry of Time follows the life of an unnamed civil servant who lands a gig with a mysterious new government ministry as a ‘bridge’. In the near future, the government have discovered a time-travel door, but before they can properly start to use it, they must first understand the limits and impacts of time travel. To help determine these parameters, the ministry pulls five people are out of their various times and forces them to assimilate to modern-day life in London. The bridge’s new role involves living with and monitoring time-expat Commander Graham Gore, who has been pulled from the year 1847 in the final days of Sir John Franklin’s doomed Arctic expedition.
Most of the book is focused on the quirky and interesting interactions between the main character and the expats and other members of the Ministry. She muses about how the experiences of the expats mirror or contrast her parents’ experience migrating to England from Cambodia, and her own experiences of existing as a person with two heritages. As the story continues, and her relationships with various characters develop, the mystery around the time-door and the ministry start to become more and more sinister and the bridge is forced to reflect on her own role in the beauracracy at work.
It’s hard to describe the pacing of this book. On one hand, it might be called slow, since the plot doesn’t unfold in any great hurry until the last third or so. On the other, at no point does the pace feel slow. There is something compelling and interesting in how each of the expats adapts to this new time. The chapters are long, very long, but broken into smaller scenes throughout so that it’s easy to take a break mid-chapter without endangering the flow of the story.
While the narrator can feel naive at times, and seems to often actively avoid seeing the truth of what is happening around her, her account is so wonderfully honest that, even though her relationships with others feel secretive and tenuous, her relationship with the reader feels somewhat intimate as she divulges her mistakes, her fears, and her most vulnerable moments.
On the flip side, Gore remains comparatively distant from the reader, only ever observed through the bridge or through the short almost detached asides scattered between chapters which recount his final days on the Arctic expedition before he is taken through the time door.
Two of Gore’s fellow time expats, Captain Arthur Reginald Smith (1916) and Margaret ‘Maggie’ Kemble (1665) light up the page whenever they appear. Arthur’s sweet disposition and Maggie’s sarcastic sass and enthusiasm make them endearing characters who I found myself constantly looking forward to seeing again. Between them, we begin to piece together the mutlitudes of ways in which the world has changed and grown, and how it has remained the same. Though these expats have literally travelled through time to develop relationships in the present, there is a sense that history and time link everyone, not just individuals.
While I did occassionally lose track of some characters – numbers are not my forte and frequently the expats switch between referring to each other by their names and by the years from which they were taken – for the most part the cast is largely easy to follow. Similarly, while it wasn’t always clear where the story was heading, there was always a sense that it was moving towards something.
There is so much to say on this book, but as with all good time-travel fiction, there is too much potential for spoilers. So I will only say, this is a book that bears rereading to fully grasp all the concepts Bradley has jammed in.
The Ministry of Time is delightful as much as it is contemplative, charming as much as it is confronting. Bradley pulls readers along with a delicate balancing act not unlike the one her protagonist is managing – a strange mix of friendly and affable while at once being critical and challenging.
The quality of the writing and the depth of the story have me fervently watching Bradley’s career and awaiting her next book, as this was truly a top-notch debut.
FOUR AND A HALF STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley is available now from Hachette. Grab yourself a copy from Booktopia HERE.
