[Bradley's] utterly winning book is a result of violating not so much the laws of physics as the boundaries of genre ... Gradually, as the novel’s carbonated humor fizzes away, sharper elements protrude ... Admittedly, Bradley is not a tidy writer. This plot eventually starts to shake like a Radio Flyer wagon traveling at DeLorean speeds. But by then nothing matters but the fate of this asynchronous couple brought together across cultures and eras.
For a book that could also be easily described as witty, sexy escapist fiction, The Ministry of Time packs a substantial punch ... Kaliane Bradley proves that it’s possible to address imperialism, the scourge of bureaucracy, cross-cultural conflict and the paranoia inherent in a surveillance state through her utterly entertaining novel ... An edgy, playful and provocative book that’s likely to be the most thought-provoking romance novel of the summer.
A novel where things happen, lots of them, and all of them are exciting to read about and interesting to think about ... While Bradley’s writing can veer towards the glib, go with it: give in to the tide of this book, and let it pull you along. It’s very smart; it’s very silly; and the obvious fun never obscures completely the sheer, gorgeous, wild stretch of her ideas.
There is, naturally, a great deal of comedy to be had from the Victorian’s reactions to the modern world ... Bradley, who intersperses the contemporary timeline with episodes from Gore’s ill-fated Arctic expedition, skirts some of the easier laughs by giving him real dignity. He has his own world view, which feels properly informed by his era ... Bradley’s prose is itself a riff on the cross-temporal comedy, combining spare, sometimes melancholy observations with a playful, internet-inflected tone ... Still, there’s no getting around the fact that the novel could have benefited from another draft. In the middle the sentences become alarmingly garbled and many characters are not as vivid as they need to be. Moreover, the sci-fi plot is underdeveloped and overly relied upon.
At least on a superficial level, the fuss makes a degree of sense ... There’s fun to be had in watching this brightly characterised bunch get to grips with a Britain that is, ideologically and culturally, a foreign country ... Yet the social commentary is shoehorned in, not woven ... But fundamentally, The Ministry of Time is a bodge full of undeveloped ideas, tied to a plot that fizzles out even as it insists that more is becoming at stake ... Reading The Ministry of Time is like wading through a bog of undigested imagery and overwrought sentences.
A fantastical combination of time-travel novel, spy thriller and slow-burn romance, The Ministry of Time uses its fish-out-of-water story to explore cultural identity and the legacy of British imperialism. Thoughtful and deliberately paced, Kaliane Bradley’s debut novel mainly focuses on the relationship between the nameless bridge and her charge.
Gripping, gleefully delicious ... [Bradley's] finished novel—taut, artfully unspooled, and vividly written—retains the kind of insouciant joy and intimacy you might expect from a book with those origins. It’s also breathtakingly sexy.
Clever ... A thriller-like scenario regarding mortal threats to the narrator and Gore feels secondary; more fruitful are Bradley’s depictions of the ways in which time travelers react to modern nightclubs, sexual freedoms, and the news that the empire has "collapse[d]." It’s a sly and ingenious vehicle for commentary on the disruptions and displacements of modern life.
