Book Report - The Ministry of Time
I just finished Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time. It was definitely not my usual reading.
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.
I got hooked into reading this book because I’m a fan of Science Fiction, and I do enjoy a good time travel story. I don’t remember where I heard about it, but I’d never read any of the author’s work before. I was unsure what to expect, but I really enjoyed it for the most part.
Most of the reading I do doesn’t tend to be particularly advanced. My vocabulary is probably about average and I rarely have to look up any words in my usual fare. This book wasn’t an exception though there were a few places I had to figure out meanings based on contex.
This book was not an action book. For the most part, it focused on a relationship between two people and the people who surround those individuals to a lesser extent. The SciFi aspects of the story were more background and less relevant in the day to day, which usually took place in a home. Not a home on a space ship or anything like that. Just a house in a quiet neighborhood near London.
Despite not being something I’d usually read, I found I really enjoyed myself. For some reason I took some time getting going, but after I made it about a third of the way in I burned through the rest of it in a day. I’d recomend this book to people who enjoy a book that doesn’t require a fight every other page.
Day 46 of the #100DaysToOffload Series.
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