The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

Written ~15th October

It’s now a couple of weeks since I read Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time and all of the stacked-up scheduled posts I produced during a relatively quiet week in late September have been sucked up and spat out onto TriumphOfTheNow.com and I must, once again, sit myself down and think and reflect on what I have read and – maybe – seen in the world around me.

This week (the second week of October) has been a particularly busy one, with five days of paid work happening (which is too many for me “in this life phase”¹, I don’t like that, no no no thank you, please! I want more than one full day in 7 with my wonderful little bastard² child, though the following two weeks I’m working less than I have been recently, so it does all average out somewhat) and – of course, of course, of course – my work-in-progress performance of BALD PERSONALITY DISORDER as part of the Lambeth Fringe on Monday 13th, a real creative milestone.

That show, which in its version as of this week, lasts 50 minutes and contains gags about hair loss, dog owning, money, class, gender identities, mental health, and parenting, also contains a semi-serious song, an interactive bald-themed quiz, some live shaving and some sincere conversation about money, class, gender identities, mental health and parenting (there’s nothing serious about hair loss or dog owning, as both of these are silly things).

I was happy with how it went, and although the audience didn’t start off bigger than the audience started off for my one-off nude poetry show this August, scott manley hadley exposes themselves and the shape of the earth (it’s flat), with a ZERO walk-out percentage (as opposed to 50% for the naked poetry) there was a slightly bigger audience at the end of this second long-form attempt than the first. So that’s progress. The next opportunities to see BALD PERSONALITY DISORDER will be announced soon…

Yes.

Anyway.

The Ministry of Time.

So, I read this weeks ago now, and I had such a thoroughly good time of it that I ploughed through it in under 48 hours, which is a rare thing for me to do “in this life phase”.

The premise is that the British government (booo) has somehow acquired time travel technology (oooo), and are conducting tests of the feasibility of time travel, initially by kidnapping people who were, according to the historical record, missing or presumed dead while not proximate to other people.

They have, then, acquired five people from the past few hundred years who they have paired with vetted, top security level civil servants, who will try to help them adjust to contemporary life.

The narrator and protagonist is a high level translator, a British-Cambodian woman who has steadily climbed the ranks of the security service, though never passing the tests required to become a field agent. The other four handlers of the people from the past have slightly different governmental histories, but they are all, ultimately, people considered “safe pairs of hands”, people considered trustworthy.

There’s lots of fun and some very sweet “fish out of water” play as the historical characters find ways to thrive – but also ways to suffer – as they live in the present(ish) day.

There are limits as to what they are permitted to do and where they may go, but most push against the limits, except for one, who fails to adjust and slowly, strangely, begins to literally disappear…

There is a threat that being out of time may cause a body to not exist… but there also seem to be floating rumours in the titular Ministry that there is a hard limit on simultaneous time travellers, and this means that if a time traveller is failing to adjust – or is failing to adjust in a way that might not ultimately benefit the British ruling elite – they might not only disappear, but be disappeared…

It’s all beautifully and tautly put together and plotted and (as per any competent time travel novel) there are twists and turns and people who are not who they seem and lives that are not passing in the same order as the lives of others.

The central relationship is sweet and fun and a very believable romance between a 19th century polar explorer and a young(ish?) civil servant in the modern age, though I did find there to be a real tone of lonely melancholy in all the sex scenes, which I couldn’t quite decide if this was an intentional literary flutter due to the past tense narrative presence of hindsight – reflecting on a lover one is no longer with – or something more reflective of a contemporary 21st sexuality that I’ve been inured, through repression, from ever noticing… The sex scenes – to me – felt more like scenes of shared masturbation, with desire functioning in the novel, perhaps, as something, ultimately, parallel to – rather than part of – romantic love. But what do I know about sex and sexuality? (Very little. Maybe this is what it’s always been for better adjusted people than I.)

That said, it’s an engaging, exciting, fun and, yes, melancholic adventure through potentialities of connection and the externally-forced dissipation. It’s part bureaucratic thriller, it’s part romance, it’s part fantasy, but it’s all very very good.

Readable, characterful, exciting, solid.

Yes. Thank you very much.

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1. This is a new catchphrase I’m developing. ↩︎
2. He’s not legally a bastard as I am legally, i.e. civilly, married. But in the eyes of the one true god (the Catholic one, I’ve been told) there’s no record anywhere legitimising him…
   I don’t know if priests look over the marriage notices of the Toronto City Hall and pass the details on up to the Pope who then passes them on, directly, to God, but it seems unlikely.
   It seems unlikely, yes, that any of the recent popes have whispered my name from their fluttering lips in the dead of night as they commune alone with their deity beneath their silky Papal sheets, but it’s also not impossible.
   Also, I more meant “bastard” as in “what a cheeky bastard” as my child has recently learned how to both walk and climb and every second of his life seems to be a binge of thrill-seeking, adrenaline-chasing pursuit of the highest and most dangerous locations a small child could possibly be.
   He’s not quite dancing on tables yet, but he is very much trying to stand on them at every possible moment.
   What a cheeky bastard!  ↩︎