'The Ministry of Time' by Kaliane Bradley

 

From the BLURB: 

A BOY MEETS A GIRL. THE PAST MEETS THE FUTURE. A FINGER MEETS A TRIGGER. THE BEGINNING MEETS THE END. ENGLAND IS FOREVER. ENGLAND MUST FALL. 

In the near future, a disaffected civil servant is offered a lucrative job in a mysterious new government ministry gathering 'expats' from across history to test the limits of time-travel. 

Her role is to work as a 'bridge': living with, assisting and monitoring the expat known as '1847' - Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin's doomed expedition to the Arctic, so he's a little disoriented to find himself alive and surrounded by outlandish concepts such as 'washing machine', 'Spotify' and 'the collapse of the British Empire'. With an appetite for discovery and a seven-a-day cigarette habit, he soon adjusts; and during a long, sultry summer he and his bridge move from awkwardness to genuine 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 structures and histories that have shaped them? And how do you defy history when history is living in your house?

'The Ministry of Time' is the debut novel from British-Cambodian writer and editor based in London, Kaliane Bradley. 

So, this may well be my favourite book of 2024. WOW-ee. What an enjoyable read, especially for a low-science fiction girly whose particular proclivity is time-travel tales (those are always my fave 'Doctor Who' episodes, the back-in-time ones). So, some random observations; 

⦿ I am very fond of 2005 YA novel 'The White Darkness' by Geraldine McCaughrean, which is about a teenage girl who is genuinely in love with (the long-dead) Captain Lawrence 'Titus' Oates from the doomed Terra Nova Expedition. So when I read the blurb for 'The Ministry of Time' about Britain having harnessed time-travel and successfully bought six travellers from various eras to the modern-day, including Commander Graham Gore from the doomed Franklin expedition - I was all in. *Especially* when the blurb hinted that Gore's present-day "bridge" - the protagonist of the novel who is tasked with helping him acclimatise and who maybe starts to develop feelings - I was *ALL IN*. 

⦿ Time-travel has always been my bag. Modern-day women falling for out-of-time men is my particular favourite sub-genre ... I know exactly when this started; 'Playing Beatie Bow' by Ruth Park, and the time-travelling Abigail falling for Judah in the 1800's. This was particularly cemented when I read 'Outlander' by Diana Gabaldon as an 18-year-old; WWII army-nurse Claire passing through the stones to Jamie Fraser in the 18th century. No doubt there's some Marty McFly 'Back to the Future' Michael J. Fox appreciation thrown in there too. But this sub-genre of sci-fi and time-travel is my jamboree. And 'The Ministry of Time' gave it to me in HEAPINGS of timey-wimey goodness. The romance is slow-burn but makes up for it because our protagonist (whose name we don't know, but we get an intimate first-person account from) crushes HARD on Gore and that amps up the burn. But I was also very sucked into the mechanics and politics of the time-travel itself, so it wasn't like I was ever cooling my heels and checking my watch for the low sci-fi to get good ... it was ALL good. 

⦿ The politics of time-travel in this book reminded me of the Norwegian sci-fi series 'Beforeigners', about people from different time-periods suddenly randomly appearing in Oslo, becoming refugees of time that the Norwegian government has to deal with. It's also a little bit like the (brilliant) Aussie TV series 'Glitch' set in a small outback town where; 'Seven people from different time-periods return from the dead with no memory and attempt to unveil what brought them to the grave in the first place.' I like this connection in particular because there's a shady organisation linked to the raising of the dead, a big-pharma laboratory called "Noregard" (best in-universe name for a corporation, ever.) It's also a wee bit like the 2001 rom-com starring Hugh Jackman and Meg Ryan, 'Kate & Leopold' about an English Duke from 1876 falling for a modern-day New Yorker when he's unceremoniously dragged into the future. If any/all of those recs are your picnic; this book is for you. 

⦿ He filled the room like a horizon ... the writing was sumptuous, and gorgeous at times. Sometimes Bradley had a turn-of-phrase of description that made me go "ohhhhh." When something changes you constitutionally, you say: ‘the earth moved,’ but the earth stays the same. It’s your relationship with the ground that shifts. 

⦿ I actually first heard about this book, in a Guardian round-up of British debuts to look out for, and the description of Kaliane Bradley's idea made my spine sizzle and then I Googled her even more and found that she partly wrote the idea for 'The Ministry of Time' during Covid and lockdowns and because she kinda fell in love with the only photograph of Graham Gore. No, really. 'Kaliane Bradley Fell in Love With a Dead Man. The Result Is The Ministry of Time' ... if that's not an *amazing* sales-pitch I don't know what is. 

⦿ I just loved this. It's extremely cinematic and I wouldn't be surprised to find it is being developed into a movie or limited-TV series. It both feels appropriately head-nodding to plenty of other fabulous low-sci-fi time-travel that will make aficionados happy, but also sparkly-unique enough to keep adding to the conversation about the space-time continuum. Even if I guessed the small twist that comes, I did so because I know this sub-genre so well and expected certain markers along the way and Bradley did not disappoint. I loved this so much, I was only one-chapter in when I knew it'd give me the best bookish hangover and be hard book to follow-up, probably throwing me into a reading-rut.

5/5