The Ministry of Time: Characters, summary, book review & FAQs

21 May

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley synopsis/summary:

A time travel romance, a speculative spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingeniously constructed exploration of the nature of truth and power and the potential for love to change it 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 machine,” “Spotify,” and “the collapse of the British Empire.” But he adjusts quickly; he is, after all, an explorer by trade. Soon, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a seriously uncomfortable housemate dynamic, evolves into something much more. Over the course of an unprecedented year, Gore and the bridge fall haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences they never could have imagined.

Supported by a chaotic and charming cast of characters—including a 17th-century cinephile who can’t get enough of Tinder, a painfully shy World War I captain, and a former spy with an ever-changing series of cosmetic surgery alterations and a belligerent attitude to HR—the bridge will be forced to confront the past that shaped her choices, and the choices that will shape the future.

An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, The Ministry of Time asks the universal What happens if you put a disaffected millennial and a Victorian polar explorer in a house together?

The Ministry of Time characters:

Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time has several central characters, the main of course being our unnamed female narrator and Commander Graham Gore, with a few other notable supporting characters including Margaret “Maggie” Kemble and Captain Arthur Reginald-Smyth. Here is the full list of The Ministry of Time characters.

Nameless FMC narrator
Commander Graham Gore
Margaret Kemble
Captain Arthur Reginald-Smyth
Adela
Quentin
The Brigadier
Salese
Thomas Cardingham
Simellia
Ed
Ralph
Ivan
Captain James Fitzjames
Captain Crozier
Lieutenant James Fairholme
Lieutenant Irving
Sir John Franklin
Stanley
Harry Goodsir
Des Voeux
Get The Ministry of Time here.

The Ministry of Time book review.

My rating: ★★★★☆
4 stars.

Time travel fiction usually sends my brain into overdrive, grappling with grandfather paradoxes, multiverses, and plot holes (possibly thanks to Rick & Morty + Blake Crouch!).

But, post-holiday me managed to switch off and just enjoy The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley. It was a refreshing, fun, and free-flowing read—Clearly, I need more vacations.

Interestingly, this story intertwines with real historical events. In 1845, the HMS Terror and HMS Erebus set off from England to find the Northwest Passage, only to face the worst disaster in British polar exploration history.

This history forms the backbone of this romantic, speculative, comedy, historical fiction, spy thriller—a mouthful of genres that blend ingeniously and creatively. Despite the ambitious mix, it worked somehow, for me, anyway.

The characters and historical accuracy, spanning past, present, and future, were convincingly portrayed, and I grew quite fond of them, especially our nameless British-Cambodian FMC who I related to on many levels (and is undoubtedly a self-insert, but it's done well), Commander Graham Gore, Margaret Kemble and Arthur.

The humour in this hit all the right notes for me. It’s self-aware, self-deprecating and dry, cleverly addressing the time travel tropes and paradoxes mentioned above with imagination, as well as containing witty, non-preachy, plot-relevant commentary and themes on colonialism, inherited trauma, slavery, racism, racial identity/passing as a biracial person, the climate emergency, gender and LGBTIQ+ sexuality.

I also picked up some delightful archaic phrases and insults. Here are three of my favourites and I'll leave the rest of the wide range of eclectic gems for you to discover:

🔹 Pizzle-headed doorknob

🔹 Heron-faced fool

🔹 His face is as soiled linens!

If you’re intrigued by this all-inclusive genre mish-mash, I highly recommend adding this one to your reading list. Congrats to Kaliane Bradley on a brilliant debut.

My heartfelt thanks to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton | Sceptre for the advanced e-reading copy, which I did not read in advance of publication on the 16th of May 2024, therefore it is available to read and listen to right now! 🎊

View The Ministry of Time book review on GoodReads here.