Source of book: Audiobook from the library
Could the future of the world turn on whether a time traveler from the 19th Century finds out about Auschwitz early in his orientation rather than 9/11?
What would it be like to meet your future self and find you have turned into a Nazi?
Is a relationship between a native-born white person and a refugee from the third world inherently exploitative?
How much compromise with Empire is morally justifiable? And does this change depending on your status within that Empire?
Is there anyone in this book who isn’t morally compromised? Is there anyone in the actual real world who isn’t?
And, perhaps as important, “what genre IS this book anyway?”
The Ministry of Time is difficult to define. It is, in one way or another, historical fiction, time-travel science fiction, an office drama, a romance, and a spy thriller. And also a surprisingly deep exploration of all of the questions I listed above.
It is dark - particularly at the end - but not entirely tragic - there is hope for the future. It is also laugh-out-loud funny at times. It has a sweet, if doomed, romance. It has a surprisingly good sex scene. (Women write them better than men - let’s be honest about that.) It has the most awkward and hilarious courtship scene I have read in years. Maybe ever.
I also found the not-subtle metaphor of time travel for immigration to be powerful - the past is a foreign country, after all. The author’s exploration of this idea is really good, and thought provoking in the way that the best science fiction should be.
With all of that said, how do I even write this without spoilers? It is probably impossible, although I will try not to reveal too much.
I will say that this is an excellent book. No surprise, since it made President Obama’s summer reading list in 2024. I found it compelling throughout, and a fascinating premise.
As with many books in our modern times that became unexpected hits, this one wasn’t exactly planned. (I have to mention Space Opera by Catherynne Valente, which originated in a Twitter dare.)
Kaliane Bradley (pronounced “Collie-Ann,” I believe, from the afterword in the book, read by the author, and her instragram account) worked as an editorial assistant for Granta (a British literary magazine), and wrote reviews and interviews for a variety of publications, including The Guardian, for a decade before turning to fiction. (Interestingly, this earlier career is that of the narrator’s sister in the book.)
During the pandemic lockdown, she started thinking about writing this story after watching The Terror, which took supernatural liberties with one of the doomed polar expeditions of the 1840s. She didn’t actually intend to write a novel for publication, but wrote for her own amusement and to share with a handful of friends. After they read the first version of the story, they encouraged her to share it with the world.
I should mention, as a lawyer, that this resulted in a lawsuit. Apparently, there is a Spanish TV series, El Ministerio el Tiempo, which shares the name, and, some basic ideas. I mean, the title is enough, right? If there is an actual government agency, the Ministry of Time, it presumably has something to do with time travel. And time travel has causality issues, which have been explored for over a century in science fiction.
Bradley, for her part, says she had never seen the Spanish series and had no idea it existed, and that her work is original. I have no idea how things were resolved - if they are. But reading a summary of the show doesn’t show any significant similarities other than the name and common time travel themes.
Here is the basic premise: the book is set in our own time, but one where a time travel device has been captured from time travelers from the future, who have come back to try and prevent climate catastrophe and mass pollution caused by weapons that would be created in the future, but whose roots are in the present.
Having captured this device, the contemporary British government decides to use it for experiments in time travel. Since it would be, in their view, unethical to experiment on living people, they come up with an interesting plan.
They would use the device to bring people from the past forward in time, and see how it affected them. In order to at least reduce the ethical concerns, the people chosen are those who would have died soon afterward in their own time. That way, if things go wrong, they wouldn’t lose any life, and if things went right, they got an unexpected benefit.
Ostensibly, the goal for those they bring forward, is to “bridge” them to their new time, enabling them to assimilate and function in 21st century culture. The ones chosen are a soldier from the 17th century, one from World War I, a woman who would have died in the French Revolution, and a woman who would have died of the plague in the 17th century.
And also, a real historical figure, Graham Gore, who died in the doomed Sir John Franklin search for the Northwest Passage in 1847. As the afterword details, we have some information about him, although not that much. He was a respected officer who everyone liked. He was a crack shot hunter. He played the flute and drew well. And not that much else.
Oh, and the surviving daguerreotype of him reveals him to be quite good looking. (I mean, I’m a cishet guy, and even I can tell he is a looker.)
The narrator (who, interestingly, is the one character who never gets a name), is an agent for the Ministry of Time, assigned to be the “bridge” - the handler and educator - for Graham.
Two of the other “time ex-pats” are major characters in the book: Arthur Reginald-Smyth, the World War One soldier, who turns out to be gay, and have a huge, maybe unrequited crush on Graham; and Maggie Kemble, who would have died of the plague along with the rest of her household. She is a lesbian spinster who is, like Graham, quite good looking.
I might mention at this point that pretty much nobody in this book is entirely straight. The author, in interviews, has mentioned that she never envisioned the characters as fully heterosexual. This makes for plenty of interesting triangles, but also interesting contrasts between the cultures of the different eras. Not least of which is the fact that homosexual liaisons have always been common, and the active suppression was not as universal as we were taught. Public attitudes towards sexuality in general have varied, of course, and that too provides interesting material for the book.
So what to say about the rest of it? Particularly without too many spoilers? I guess it should be expected that any government in possession of a powerful device is likely to turn it to nefarious use. Pretty much every technology ever developed found its way into weaponry really damn fast. (See: nuclear power) In any system with a somewhat secret agency, there will be skullduggery. Issues of race and gender haven’t gone away in our time, to put it mildly.
To go back to the questions I asked at the beginning, perhaps the one that is the most difficult to answer is that of whether an equal relationship is possible between a refugee and a native-born person.
This is particularly interesting given the author’s own family. Like the narrator, she is the child of a British father and a Cambodian refugee mother.
So….I have questions about how she sees her parents’ marriage. The book certainly makes the argument that such a relationship cannot be equal, mutual, and meet the needs of both parties. (Can any marriage entirely? Probably not, in my opinion.) Hence, (spoiler alert) the book looks at two possible futures of such a relationship.
I find it an interesting parallel that Andrea Dworkin argued that, in practice, heterosexual relationships have the same problem: there is an inherent power imbalance imposed by the culture, and it is rare that any one relationship finds a way to transcend it.
The other fascinating connection to Bradley’s own life is a scene where the narrator and Simellia (a black woman) discuss the fact that the narrator is able (sometimes) to pass as white. Looking at Bradley’s picture, I can see where, in certain situations, she might pass. Although not always. Plus, at least here in the US, Asians of lighter skin tend to be considered “model minorities,” and having a white father is often enough to get one accepted into white society.
There is a lot more in this book, of course, and I could discuss it for pages. I am thinking maybe of nominating it for our book club.
I guess I will end with a few of the most humorous lines.
First, when Graham complains about television, and how it seems to be the airing of the worst of human behavior, the narrator responds:
“Nobody made you watch East Enders.”
The narrator also describes Guinness as “Angry Marmite,” which isn’t entirely wrong.
Finally, in trying to navigate a cross-century courtship, Graham confesses to asking Maggie for advice.
“You asked the lesbian from the 17th century about modern day dating?”
Yeah, that’s pretty funny. Which is good, because the humor is needed to balance the darker and more serious themes.
In summary, I have found lately that a lot of the best science fiction I have read lately comes from female authors, including authors of color. For too long, SciFi was a boy’s club, and it is refreshing to see where new voices and perspectives go with the basic ideas. There is a lot of creativity, thoughtfulness, and imagination.
The audiobook had two narrators. Katie Leung handled the main narrative, and did a fabulous job. Her use of voices for the different characters was really helpful in following the dialogue, and she has great range. George Weightman narrated the fictionalized historical interludes of the John Franklin expedition in between each chapter. He does these in his best early Victorian style, just like the actual documents related to the various polar expeditions. Both are very good, so I give a high rating to this audiobook on all counts.
I will also recommend the NPR interview of the author,
which is fascinating.
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