“Life is a series of slamming doors. We make irrevocable decisions every day. A twelve-second delay, a slip of the tongue, and suddenly your life is on a new road.”

With razor-sharp wit, workplace banter and a dreamy romance all wrapped up in time travel shenanigans, The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley is such a wildly fun debut.

Firstly this is a difficult book to pinpoint its exact genre as it blurs together sci-fi, historical fiction, thriller and time-travel, which sounds like a lot but trust me, it works so well. The British Government has acquired time-travel and in a bid to experiment they are secretly gathering historical figures from different timelines and different places around the world to see if they can successfully integrate into modern society. These are known as ‘expats’ and our narrator is a ‘bridge’, a top secret civil servant who is tasked with assisting an expat known as 1847–Commander Graham Gore. Her task is to live with Commander Gore, who was supposed to have died on the tragic Franklin Expedition to the Arctic, and help him adapt to life in modern UK. Over the course of a rather strange year our bridge and Commander Gore tread unfamiliar ground together as they cohabit in a small government owned house and eventually begin to get quite close. That is until someone begins hunting them and the other expats.

I was immediately captured by how clever Bradley’s humour is. Seeing Commander Gore navigate concepts such as washing machines, television (which he believes is evil), and on the flip side finding a love of Spotify (ah the freedom of endless music!) brings about many comedic moments. I loved the way Gore would describe our modern world, he had some laugh out loud turns of phrases, for example describing Sesame Street characters as ‘monstrosities against the will of God’, really made me chuckle. Gore is immediately charming, he’s extremely polite, of course he is bewildered too but not to the point of insanity nor aggression. He actually adapts relatively well and his awkwardness at living with an unmarried woman, who both anchors and upends him, actually makes his plight quite poignant. After all, to leave behind the people and the world you know to live somewhere alien to you is by no means easy. Yet our bridge knows a little something about this as she too has grown up in a family who had to start from scratch in a foreign place, and so they both understand each other in different ways. 

Although this book is primarily fun, it simultaneously reflects on some heavy themes such as racism, colonialism and post-colonialism. You see much like Bradley who is a British Cambodian author, our unnamed bridge is also a British Cambodian, and so naturally the narrative reflects on her experiences as someone with a mixed race heritage. In turn, Gore’s character struggles with his involvement in the shipping of slavers and of an Inuit man whom he accidentally kills, which we see at the beginning of each chapter where there are flashbacks of Gore on the Franklin expedition. We also have a diverse cast of side characters and their experiences are portrayed upon too, from Simillia’s encounters as a Black female within the Ministry, to the 17th Century expat, Margaret Kemble, and the very shy introverted World War I Captain, Reginald-Smith, who were both queer in timelines where that would have been criminal. Although both of these characters adapt less rapidly than Commander Gore does, they do find the freedoms of modern society welcoming. In fact Margaret takes a real liking to Tinder and Hollywood.

“When I look back at myself on the bridge year, I see that I thought I was doing something constructive, escaping exploitation by becoming exceptional. In fact, what I was doing was squeezing my eyes shut and singing la la la at the gathering darkness, as if the gathering darkness cared that I couldn’t see it.”

I feel this is a novel you can’t truly appreciate until you reach its end. For a large proportion of the novel I felt detached from our bridge, I couldn’t grasp much depth from her character, I couldn’t really feel for her because I felt I barely knew what made her tick. Yet after finishing the novel and with the revelations that brought, I completely see why. I cannot go into detail here but the less you know about our bridge, the better impact the ending has on you. However, one of my favourite aspects was the romance between her and Gore, as they both flourish here, and seeing Gore master modern dating was both amusing and heartbreaking. 

The Ministry of Time is a novel which oozes with charm and wittiness, whilst also reflecting upon life in all its diversity. Bradley’s debut is a riotously inspiring read. 

ARC provided by Kimberley at Sceptre Books and Hodder and Stoughton, in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for the copy! All quotes used are taken from an ARC and are subject to change upon publication.

The Ministry of Time is out May 14th but you can pre-order your copy on Bookshop.org