'Ministry of Time' by Kaliane Bradley, a thoughtful romantic novel

“People are not history,” scoffs Adela, deputy secretary of the Ministry, whose work is surrounded by secrecy and subterfuge. This retort comes late in Kaliane Bradley's first novel, “The Ministry of Time,” but it is a telling line. Her disregard for individual lives reveals what is at stake in the novel. If people are not history, what is? This is a disturbing statement coming out of the mouth of a senior British bureaucrat. For a book that could also easily be described as witty and sexy escapist fiction, “The Ministry of Time” packs a substantial punch.

Many critically acclaimed books lately embrace mystery and absurdity in a way that suspends and expands conventional notions of time. “The Story of the Terrace” by Hilary Leichter Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award “I'm not homeless if this isn't my home” by Lorrie Moore “Companion Piece” by Ali Smith, winner of the National Book Award “Blackouts” by Justin Torres and Marie-Helene Bertino’s “Beautyland,” among others, forge moving and invigorating emotional connections. Her joy reveals possibilities and perspectives that could be lost in a novel linked to the proven reality of the 21st century. After all, in a world where nothing seems normal, fiction that embraces disregard for physics and convention reflects our new, upside-down daily lives.

To this end, Kaliane Bradley demonstrates that it is possible to address imperialism, the scourge of bureaucracy, intercultural conflict, and the paranoia inherent to a surveillance state through her thoroughly entertaining novel. “The Ministry of Time” begins with a sixth round of job interviews for an undisclosed position. The anonymous narrator is caught off guard when “the interviewer said my name, causing my thoughts to race. I don't say my name, not even in my head. He had said it correctly, something people generally don't do. For the narrator, who “stabilized” herself as a “translator-consultant” in the Department of Languages ​​of the Ministry of Defense, this top-secret job that pays three times her current salary deserves the mystery.

The work will soon be announced. The narrator, whose mother emigrated to the UK from Cambodia, will work closely with people who might bristle at the term “refugees”. He is now part of the Ministry of Expatriation and works with one of the five “expatriates” rescued from the past. Confident in her narrative, Bradley eliminates the details of how and why time travel exists in the novel.

“All you need to know is that in the near future, the British government developed the means to travel through time, but had not yet experimented with how to do it.” With that, from the beginning, readers and characters are asked to take a leap of faith as the narrator takes on the role of “bridge” between an “expatriate” and modern life. The broader purpose of his job also proves elusive to him, but in short, the narrator is tasked with being the roommate of a explorer named Commander Graham Gore, who died in a doomed Royal Navy exhibition. in the Arctic in 1847. He is polite and understandably nervous. , but also pretty sexy for someone who died almost 200 years ago. Will this be a strange meet-cute or is something more chaotic afoot?

Buckle up, the journey is just beginning. Juggling the notions of “here” (the present) and “there” (the past), the novel's five expatriates confront (or not) the fact that they have been snatched from the past. The ministry selected people who were about to die so that their departures from the past would not break their historical timelines in any way. But how would they affect the present? Bridges take notes and medical examinations are de rigueur, but this collected data is simply passed on without much analysis.

Expats and bridges adapt to life together in a very fun way: sharing beautiful houses provided by the ministry, visiting pubs and learning about the very existence of cinema. Music streaming services are a success, but expats generally find it difficult to accept the scale of modern life. Whether this is due to some physical mutation created by the process of time travel or whether it is simply the challenge of cultural displacement of people “loose as dust in narrative time,” real fissures begin to emerge.

In a way that is not at all surprising to the reader, suspicions arise about the nature of the project. Why exactly is secrecy necessary and what are the details of this time travel ability that we are being asked to tacitly accept? Tensions also arise between the narrator and another bridge, Simillia, who are the two people of color in this close-knit circle. The specter of imperialism haunts and informs a certain tension between the narrator and Gore. However, as a green bureaucrat, happy to rise through the ranks, he confronts Simillia and tells her, “You signed up for this job… [knowing], as much as I did, that what we were doing was changing the world. That's what you wanted, remember? Do you think the world changes if you ask politely? Or do you think there has to be risk?

But this unabashed confidence begins to falter. The narrator acknowledges, “Every time I gave Graham a book, I tried to guide him toward a story I had been telling me my whole life.” He then notes that the ministry “fed us all poison from a bottle marked 'prestige' and we developed a high tolerance for bitterness.” While the book takes some obvious stances from university-level postcolonial theory and language, it goes beyond These more clichéd moments focus attention on the characters. A dense narrative, rich in witty banter, cutting observations, and interspersed passages from Gore's doomed expedition also keep the novel tense.

“Maybe he was tired of stories, of telling them and listening to them,” the narrator reflects. Curiously, although he made languages ​​his profession (hence his tendency to consider that “the great project of the Empire was to categorize: possessed and owner, colonizer and colonized, evolved and barbara, mine and yours”), her antagonistic younger sister became a writer. By falling in love with Gore, the narrator becomes the story, changing history.

As the momentum of the story becomes that of a spy thriller, Bradley accomplishes a rare feat. “The Ministry of Time” is a novel that does not stoop to easy answers and does not fall into controversy. It is an intelligent and exciting work that is also a feast for the senses. Murder, moles, identity issues and violence wreak havoc on our happy lovers and the bubble they create in London. Yet our affection for them is as fresh and exciting as theirs is for each other, two explorers of their kind, caught up in a brilliant discovery. Bradley has written a bold, funny, and provocative book that will likely be the most stimulating romance novel of the summer. Check your history: That's no small feat.

Lauren LeBlanc is a member of the board of directors of the National Book Critics Circle.