Review by Kevin Brown
The unnamed narrator of Bradley’s debut novel, The Ministry of Time, has recently received a promotion within The Ministry, moving from the Languages department to serve as a bridge for a new expat. However, her newly arrived charge is not new to the country, as he was born in England, but new to the time period. The Ministry has discovered a time door, and they’ve used it to bring a handful of people — who were about to die in their lifetimes — into the present to see how they assimilate.
Thus, she spends most of her time with Graham Gore, who should have died in an Arctic expedition in the nineteenth century that went terribly wrong, helping him to adapt to twenty-first century life. They meet up with other bridges and expats at various times, some of whom adjust better than others. The narrator makes it clear early on that readers shouldn’t bother trying to understand the logic of time travel, advice that is always worthwhile when reading any book that involves it.
One of the reasons the narrator has her job is because her mother was a refugee from Cambodia, so leaders in The Ministry think she will work well in such a situation. However, she reveals herself to be rather naïve about the realities of her job. There are other people who are interested in the expats, leading to the narrator’s not knowing whom to trust, as she doesn’t truly understand the situation she has found herself in. She also struggles to understand Graham, and he can’t comprehend her, either, as their class and race divisions complicate their relationship beyond the obvious time differences.
Bradley uses time travel to ask questions about history, but more about history as a narrative that people construct to help provide them with purpose and meaning, as well as to control others or their world. The narrator comes to understand that she has defined others without understanding them, shaping narratives about them and herself that lead her to make a number of poor decisions. The ending leaves the future open, though, as the narrator is learning how to revise the narratives she’s crafted.
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley. Avid Reader Press, April 2025.
Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. IG, Threads, and BlueSky: @kevinbrownwrites
