The Ministry of Time
A Novel
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4.0 • 471 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF SUMMER 2024 • A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE GOODREADS CHOICE AWARD FOR SCIENCE FICTION • A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, VANITY FAIR, ESQUIRE, VOX, GOOD HOUSEKEEPING, THE INDEPENDENT, PARADE, KIRKUS REVIEWS, AND MORE…
“This summer’s hottest debut.” —Cosmopolitan • “Witty, sexy escapist fiction [that] packs a substantial punch...Fresh and thrilling.” —Los Angeles Times • “Electric...I loved every second.” —Emily Henry
“Utterly winning...Imagine if The Time Traveler’s Wife had an affair with A Gentleman in Moscow...Readers, I envy you: There’s a smart, witty novel in your future.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post
A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all: Welcome to The Ministry of Time, the exhilarating debut novel by Kaliane Bradley.
In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats” from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.
She is tasked with working as a “bridge”: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as “1847” or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,” “Spotify,” and “the collapse of the British Empire.” But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.
Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.
An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, The Ministry of Time asks: What does it mean to defy history, when history is living in your house? Kaliane Bradley’s answer is a blazing, unforgettable testament to what we owe each other in a changing world.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
An unexpected romance transcends time, space, and a 200-year age gap in this exciting sci-fi romp. Having recently discovered time travel, the UK government launches an experiment, transporting a handful of people from the past into the present—including Commander Graham Gore. Of course, the 19th-century naval officer will need someone to help him adjust to the modern world, which is how he ends up as the roommate of our heroine, whom we only know as her government job title, “the bridge.” It’s great fun to watch the romantic tension build as the bridge schools Graham on each new confoundingly futuristic concept (like toilets, dating, and class mobility). And we grew to love all the other time “expats” too—especially Margaret, a bold 17th-century lady who’s now able, for the first time, to express her queer sexuality. By the time the starring couple discover a time-travel conspiracy (and their feelings for each other), we were smitten with this thoughtful genre-bender.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British Cambodian writer Bradley's clever debut features time travel, romance, cloak-and-dagger plotting, and a critique of the British Empire. The unnamed narrator, who works as a translator for Britain's Ministry of Defence sometime in the near future, is selected by the government to aid a newly formed agency to process time travelers from the past. Her assigned "expat" is real-life polar explorer Lt. Graham Gore, who has arrived in the future sometime before his death during the ill-fated 1845 Franklin expedition, a mind-bender Bradley heads off at the pass ("Anyone who has ever watched a film with time-travel... will know that the moment you start to think about the physics of it, you are in a crock of shit"). The narrator, whose mother was a Cambodian refugee, feels a kinship with Gore's sense of disorientation. The roguishly handsome naval officer lives with her as part of the terms of the assignment, and her account of their burgeoning mutual attraction is interspersed with episodes from Gore's disastrous journey to the Arctic. A thriller-like scenario regarding mortal threats to the narrator and Gore feels secondary; more fruitful are Bradley's depictions of the ways in which time travelers react to modern nightclubs, sexual freedoms, and the news that the empire has "collapse." It's a sly and ingenious vehicle for commentary on the disruptions and displacements of modern life.
Customer Reviews
Time Travel but breezier
Interesting blend of time travel and bureaucracy - a good read for a rainy day and some escapism.
Start
You know those movies where you wait for them to start yet they don’t seem to until the end? And at the end you are left wondering what the start really had to do with the story anyway?
Over proved and underbaked.
DNF'd this at 29%. It’s a great idea for a story, but it moves slow and the prose is awkward and clunky. Actually I'm not even sure it actually moves slow, but it feels slow because the writing is so tough to chew through. It feels strained and overworked, stuffed to the bursting point with clumsily employed SAT words and similes tying way too hard to be clever. LIke the author is desperately trying to prove to us she's very intelligent. I honest to gods have no doubt that 9 times out of 10, she is the smartest person in the room. I hope with her next novel she'll trust that, so she can just focus on telling a good story. This bears all the markings of a very talented author who hasn’t found their voice and is working too hard to prove they have one. It’s not a physics book. A great story is effortless to read and quick to captivate your imagination. I found this book could do neither of those things.