Coffee & Chat Book Club: 'The Ministry of Time'

Name: Coffee & Chat Book Club: 'The Ministry of Time'
Start: 2025-08-19T10:30:00-05:00
Location: Sparta Free Library

Schedule

Tue, 19 Aug, 2025 at 10:30 am

UTC-05:00

Location

Sparta Free Library | Sparta, WI

Join the library for this month's Coffee & Chat Book Club! We'll be discussing The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley. Pick up your copy at the upstairs desk.
Book description: In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she'll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering "expats" from across history to determine if time travel is feasible--for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time. She is tasked with working as a "bridge": living with, assisting and monitoring the expat known as "1847," or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin's doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he's a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as "washing machines," "Spotify" and "the collapse of the British Empire." But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts. Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry's project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how--and whether she believes--what she does next can change the future. An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, this book asks: What does it mean to defy history, when history is living in your house? The author's answer is a blazing, unforgettable testament to what we owe each other in a changing world.