Describing Kaliane Bradley’s debut novel The Ministry of Time is like throwing together a word salad of mixed genres, tropes, and social issues. Sci-fi time travel. Political intrigue. Romance (forced proximity, slow burn, two worlds collide – they all apply). Fish out of water. Racial identity. Climate change. War. Generational trauma. Then toss all that with a dressing of pitch-perfect wit and incredible writing, and you have what I know will be one of my favorite books of 2024.
Note: this review is based on a Digital Review Copy I received from Simon & Schuster via Edelweiss.
A synopsis:
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.”
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.
Reading this book is like walking into a world so sure of its own quirkiness that I couldn’t help but love it. The humor is quiet and sharp and smart. The romance is painful bliss. The characters are by turn odd, charming, or confounding, many with important moments spent in uncomfortable reflection – or confrontation – with their past. There is just so much meat here, and I loved it.
Are some parts of the book confusing? Yes. We never learn the main character’s name. Some details of time travel are murky. The points of political intrigue twist into a loose knot. You will have to trust me when I say: it’s OK. Trust the process, even when some foreshadowing halfway through makes it seem the book will end poorly. Just trust the process.
I read this book in one day and thought about it all the next. I will probably keep thinking about it for a long, long time.
BOOK:30 