Time-travel romances are often a fantasy of knowledge: Someone ventures back into history and dazzles the rubes by understanding germ theory, or else a historical figure is brought forward and gapes at the marvels of present-day technology.
They can also be fantasies of power, as Kaliane Bradley’s THE MINISTRY OF TIME (Avid Reader Press, 339 pp., $28.99) makes clear.
When the Arctic explorer Cmdr.
Graham Gore is hauled into the 21st century along with a handful of other expats, their government handlers — bridges, as they’re called — are granted an extraordinary amount of control.
Bridges are not only responsible for explaining modernity, they also share quarters with their expats, monitoring their bodily functions, mental health, internet searches, geographic movements and political adjustments.
Persons:
Graham Gore
Organizations:
TIME, Reader Press