The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
Written by Ashley Kelmore, Posted in Reviews
Four Stars
Best for:
Those who enjoy a little bit of science fiction and a lot of philosophy.
In a nutshell:
The UK government has a time machine, but instead of traveling into the future, they’ve decided to travel to the past to bring four people to current time to see how they can integrate into the modern era.
Worth quoting:
“Who thinks their job is on the side of right? They fed us all poison from a bottle marked ‘prestige’ and we developed a high tolerance for bitterness.”
“Fitzjames had once asked him how he could approach life-threatening peril and minor annoyances with the same mildness and he’d shrugged. ‘It doesn’t improve my mood to catastrophise, so I don’t.’”
“An underrated symptom of inherited trauma is how socially awkward it is to live with.”
Why I chose it:
I’ve seen it in stores, and then it was the choice for a book subscription I’m in, so figured it was time to read it.
Review:
Ah, what a great read. I read it while on vacation and so was able to inhale it over the course of just a few days.
The book is told mostly from the perspective of the narrator, who I’ll call the Bridge. There are actually five bridges, one assigned to each of the five people brought from the past, including during the plague in the 1600s, as well as the trenches of World War 1. The Bridge who narrates this book is assigned to Graham Gore, a naval man who died in an arctic expedition. Except before he can die, he is saved and brought to the near future, as part of a test to see how people handle moving through time.
The science fiction of it all isn’t the main focus of the book, which I appreciate. Instead, the focus is on all the different aspects of what it is like for people who are brought from their time to now. What are the ethics of this? How does it impact different people? And what happens to the relationships they form in their new reality?
I love books like this. It’s not the same, but it reminded me a bit of ‘The Measure.’ And the writing? The writing is SO GOOD. There’s so much humor, and also humanity, in Bradley’s writing. The ending wasn’t my favorite, which is why this isn’t five stars, but it’s not a bad ending, if that makes sense. Just took away a bit from the rest of the book. But still, so, so good.
