A review by lailybibliography
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

adventurous dark funny reflective fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

He’d always lived inside me, years before I’d known him. I’d been trained to love him.

Okay so I don’t get all the fuss.

For months now, I’ve heard endless explanations of how The Ministry of Time was a self-insert, plagiarized fanfic level mess; others fiercely rebutting by raving about its romantic, humorous blend of commentary, self-reflection, and deep-state subterfuge. I fall on neither extreme. While I went through the book quite fast, it didn’t blow me away - positively or negatively.

I’ll stick to positives. Kaliane Bradley is a good writer. Her narration maintains an engaging, witty tone throughout pretty much the entire page count, something I appreciate a lot since a not insignificant amount of the story was basically our MC and Graham Gore screwing around their safe-house (quite literally in the second half). There’s discourse to be had about the merits of the POV character being a deliberate blank slate beyond the scantest possible details, but I cannot deny that even during bits I wanted to throw my hands in frustration with her actions or political viewpoints, I was entertained. Particularly impressive was the sharpness with which Bradley deftly critiques Empire and the ever-present dynamic between colonizer and colonized. The MC’s (and Bradley’s) mixed British-Cambodian heritage informs much of her cynical, assimilationist approach to life and passive reaction to the outer world. Intergenerational trauma and paranoia that comes with being a daughter of a survivor of the Cambodian Genocide runs throughout the story and it is both heartbreaking and tragic the ways our MC’s cautious apathy completely unravels everything in the end. I won’t spoil it, but let’s just say Ms. Bradley made some interesting capital-C choices. A stunning presentation for a debut author. She will definitely be someone whose works I will look out for.

I’ll keep the negatives brief. I definitely get the confusion about the book’s genre marketing choices. For all that the ‘romance’ aspect is played up in reviews and blurbs, it only really comes into play more than halfway through the book and I’d argue, still not an aspect that holds the most interest IMHO. Personally, for me, I felt that the MC and Graham had a better emotionally resonant connection with Margaret and Arthur respectively, but it is what it is. I don’t mind the romance overall and I certainly don’t get all the handwringing over the “ethics” of depicting a fictional romantic/sexual relationship for a historical figure. For the love of god, this was like half of all historical fiction not too long ago. People need to calm down and get off their high horses. This is not the same as Harry Styles RPF fanfiction republished with the serial numbers filed off. I do, however, think Bradley would do better with a more restrained, focused genre approach to any future works. She’s decent with the individual genre traits she writes (soft sci-fi, slice of life, romance, observational), but this scattershot style didn’t quite stick the landing.

So yeah. This was fine
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