Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now

When I finished Kaliane Bradley’s “The Ministry of Time,” I knew I had to read it again right away. This sweet genius of a book combines history, science fiction and romance, with surprises all over the place but there’s a plot development near the end that I did not see coming at all. I’m not the most forward-looking reader, but lately I’ve read a couple of novels where the plot so plodded down old tropes that even I knew what was coming miles away. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes we read books because we want the comfort of the known.

With the story fresh in my mind, I wanted to look for any bread crumbs Bradley offered that might point to the unexpected twist. It’s like wanting to understand a magician’s trick in order to be able to use it for my own sleight-of-hand.

Bradley’s first bread crumb gets thrown down in the first chapter and it’s so slick and perfect and non-hinty at all that I sailed right past it on first reading. I’m excited to see how many more there will be.