what we read: January 2025

Title: The Ministry of Time

Author: Kaliane Bradley

We chose this book, at least in part, because it was listed as one of Barack Obama's favorite books of summer 2024 and also was dubbed "utterly winning" by the Washington Post.

First, a brief summary from the publisher:

"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."

Insights and Opinions

For a variety of reasons, including medical procedures and snowbird-ism, our meeting took place via Zoom. While we all missed snacks provided by someone other than ourselves, we were grateful to be able to gather anyway and share our analyses.

The novel is constructed of two stories. One follows the "bridge," whose role is to live with, teach, mentor, and safeguard Commander Graham Gore as he comes to grips with finding himself some 175 years into a wholly foreign future. This main narrative is interrupted by short chapters that focus on Gore as he and his fellow shipmates struggle to survive Sir John Franklin's 1847 Arctic expedition. In search of the Northwest Passage, they had reached as far as the Canadian Arctic when their ships were trapped in ice, a capture that lasted almost two years. None survived.

A secret time travel program of the British government extracts Commander Gore as he is about to die, and transports him to present day. In his review for The Washington Post, Ron Charles writes "Some of what you've just read is historical fact, some is archaeological speculation, and a bit is wacky fantasy."

Given the fact that some of our group is never up for "a bit of wacky fantasy," our discussion was unsurprising.

+ Chris, Jocey and Liz were all fully on board with the novel's creative play on the question "what would happen if...," appreciating Bradley's creativity and ability to spin an entirely new story. They marveled at her deft weaving together themes of dislocation, loss, corporate politics, first-generation immigrant pain, and British adventurism into an engaging tapestry that kept them reading.

+ In contrast, Margy and Lois found the novel to be confusing and were frequently lost. Chris also suffered some confusion, but solved it by rereading just the Graham Gore chapters after completing her first read.

+ Steve was silent throughout, so we were all pretty sure he was in the "I hated it" camp, although none of us ever say we hate or love anything, much preferring to state specifics rather than generalities. Graham's story was the piece that resonated with him. "I vacillated between being fascinated with her inventiveness and being annoyed." What he did appreciate were what, to him, were the three main themes: culture and society's role in shaping who we are, how we adapt to the future, and can we control the future and change the past.

+ All agreed that Graham Gore was both a fascinating character and the heart of the book --- his sense of honor, his love for adventure, his British stiff upper lip, his disinterest in television and his love for Spotify.

+The group was universally ambivalent about the romantic relationship between the main character and Gore. Lois found it odd that the Ministry would pair each bridge with a member of the opposite sex. Jocey felt that Graham never seemed like he really wanted it, but just fell into it. Steve found it adolescent and superficial.

+ Jocey pointed out that this is Bradley's first novel, which can account for some of her lapses. Liz was bothered by a host of what she characterized as "bizarre metaphors," pointing out that if we still had some of the great editors today that worked in the past, some of these would have been nipped in the bud. Examples: "...and we'd find her sitting at the top of a long table like a mannequin awaiting the gift of demonic possession," and "when Graham got online...and learned to peck at the keyboard with the elegance and speed of a badly burned amphibian," and "I must have looked like a demented bowling ball." These and more, Liz said, stop the reader and should have been made to disappear before publication.

+ Nobody was entirely certain what happened at the end, but that's not the first time that's happened to us. Margy loved the optimism of the last paragraph: "Forgiveness, which takes you back to the person you were and lets you reset them. Hope, which exists in a future in which you are new. Forgiveness and hope are miracles. They let you change your life. They are time travel."

+ For those who would like more details about the Franklin Expedition, this video offers an excellent summary.