"The Ministry of Time" by Kaliane Bradley

"The Ministry of Time" by Kaliane Bradley has been high up in my gigantic "to read" pile since it came out last year (2024).  A novel combining the elements of time travel and romance sounded right up my alley.  Moreover, it involves events from Canadian history that were (at least somewhat) familiar to me. 

The unnamed narrator -- like the author herself, the child of a Cambodian immigrant/refugee -- works as a translator in the British civil service, and applies for -- and gets -- a promotion with a hefty salary increase. There's not much of a job description attached, though, and she soon learns why: her new job is part of a top-secret government time travel project, which has brought a small group of "expats" -- people unwittingly extracted from different eras across history -- into the present.  Her role is to serve as a "bridge" -- a roommate and live-in guide/interpreter to life in modern-day, multiracial London -- for one of the "expats," Commander Graham Gore, who died (or not...!) in 1847 in the Arctic while serving in Sir John Franklin's doomed expedition to find the fabled Northwest Passage. Bridges submit regular reports on their charges, and both bridges and expats are closely monitored by the Ministry

Despite the vast historical and cultural chasm between this odd couple, you can probably guess what happens next ;) -- although romance is just part of the story. Beyond the themes of time travel and romance, there are elements of science fiction, the lingering effects of colonialism/imperialism and racism, ethical dilemmas -- and increasing hints of something sinister going on at the Ministry.  Midway through, the book shifts into thriller territory and grows increasingly tense, with several plot twists near the end. (There is, however, also a lot of humour throughout the novel.)  I kept thinking, as I read, that this would make a fabulous movie (properly done), and apparently the BBC is working on a six-part series, adapted by Alice Birch, who also adapted Sally Rooney's exquisite novel "Normal People" for an equally exquisite TV series (both of which I have raved about, here on this blog and elsewhere).  This bodes well.  :)  

Reviewers seem to either love this one madly or dislike it intensely (I saw a lot of reviews marked "DNF" = "did not finish"). It's an ambitious book that covers a lot of territory, and perhaps it doesn't always quite hit the mark. There's a lot about the whole time travel project, its purpose and its goals, and how time travel actually works, that's rather vague -- we just have to accept what we're told and go with the flow of the story --  especially in the final chapters. The ending was rather ambiguous -- which I don't mind, but I know bugs a lot of people...!

But overall?  I loved this book. I could not put it down -- I blazed through it, gobbled it up -- and by the end, I was a bit in love with the dashing Commander Gore myself.  :)  

4.5 stars on StoryGraph, rounded up to 5 on Goodreads.  

The last few chapters, and the author's note at the end, provide more information about the fate of the Franklin Expedition and Commander Graham Gore  -- who was, it turns out, a real-life person! (You can look him up -- there's even a photograph/daguerreotype, taken before the ill-fated Arctic expedition got under way -- although he doesn't look anything like I imagined!) Remains of some of the crew members were unearthed in the 1980s, which I remember from the time (particularly the photograph of a corpse, well-preserved in the Arctic permafrost), and the locations of Franklin's two ships, the Erebus and the Terror, were discovered in 2014 and 2016, respectively, remarkably well-preserved beneath the frigid waters of the Arctic Ocean -- much to the delight of our then-Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, a history buff who had long been fascinated by the Franklin Expedition. 

This was Book #29 read to date in 2025 (and Book #2 finished in October), bringing me to 64% of  my 2025 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 45 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 5 books behind  schedule to meet my goal.  :)  You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2025 tagged as "2025 books."