This week’s reviews include a time traveling love connection in Kaliane Bradley’s “The Ministry of Time” and the rise and fall of baseball legend Pete Rose in Keith O’Brien’s “Charlie Hustle.”
Vanessa Sekinger edits the Books & Culture section
Reader Survey
The Advance is nearing its one-year anniversary. Given our expanding readership, we’d like to hear from you about how you’d like to receive the news. Please take just a second and answer this 2-question survey.
THE MINISTRY OF TIME
by Kaliane Bradley
Published by Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster (May 7, 2024)
Hardcover $17.89
Audiobook $17.05
Reviewed by Penny A Parrish
If I tried to write about time travel which put me in the year 2146, I would have to be highly creative. No doubt I would flub many details of technology that awaits us in the future.
Bradley instead uses time travel to bring people from the past into a rather frightening “today” in this fascinating, witty, moving, and, at times, disturbing novel. The Ministry of Time, a shady department in London’s government, has a machine that allows it to ferry dead people into the present. We meet several of the souls who come through this time warp and follow their attempts to not only understand our world today but to fit into it.
Each “expat’ is given a “bridge” – a person to acquaint them with current life. Our narrator is an unnamed woman, who worked in the Languages department in the Ministry of Defense before being chosen for this top secret position as a bridge. Her charge is Graham Gore, Commander in the Royal Navy ((c.1809-c.1847). He was part of an expedition to the arctic, where his ship became encased in ice and every man perished from hunger or cold. Having been thawed out, literally, he is being a difficult specimen, constantly trying to escape or evade his current plight.
The juxtaposition of the two dealing with the now and then is delightfully revealed in Bradley’s writing. After their first meeting: “We separated and spent the fading day bobbing shyly around each other like clots in a lava lamp.” As they get to know each other better: “He told me stories as if he were trying to catch himself in amber.” Their situation changes from teacher (bridge) and student(expat) to friends and to the inevitable outcome when two people are attracted to each other. It’s fun to watch this develop, at times with hysterical results.
As we meet other expats and their bridges, we learn that some cannot adjust or will not adjust. Sadness permeates many of their stories. But so does curiosity and adventure, with some grabbing this traveling ferris wheel and getting onboard for the ride of their (second) life.
Time travel stories rarely go as planned, and this one is no exception. Problems arise, good guys turn out to be bad guys, moral and ethical situations bring this to a conclusion that I did not expect. As our narrator reflects upon history after Gore finds out about the Holocaust: “Everything that has ever been could have been prevented, and none of it was. The only thing you can mend is the future.” How true.
Penny A Parrish is a long-time book reviewer and artist. Learn more about her by visiting her page at Brush Strokes Gallery, which is in downtown Fredericksburg.
CHARLIE HUSTLE: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball
by Keith O’Brien
Published by Pantheon (March 26, 2024)
Hardcover $22.66
Audiobook $17.76
Reviewed by Drew Gallagher
I have a long history with Pete Rose. He was my idol when I first started playing baseball.
When I was six, I sent him a letter, care of the Cincinnati Reds, and I got an autographed picture back. I don’t know if he actually signed the picture or if it was a random clubhouse attendant tasked with signing photos for the all-star, but at age six, that did not matter to me. I had an autographed photo from the greatest player in all of baseball, and it was displayed prominently throughout my childhood. I still have that photo.
When I was 13, I was a substitute batboy for the Reading Phillies, and the Philadelphia Phillies came to town for an exhibition game and Pete Rose was batting leadoff that day. I was nervous during the National Anthem and apparently that was evident to the Phillies’ leadoff hitter who poked me in the butt with his bat and said: “Kid, loosen up.” It did not help, but I managed to not wet myself or release any other bodily fluids.
Then, many years later, I was in Cooperstown for the Baseball Hall of Fame induction weekend, and Pete was there signing autographs, for a fee, to thumb his nose at baseball and the Hall of Fame for not allowing him entrance. He was there for many years running to remind baseball that the all-time hits leader had a number of bats and baseballs on display in the museum but that his plaque would never hang with the other elites of the game because he had been banned from the game he loved for gambling. He would sign most anything, for a fee, but would not personalize autographs which I found odd and almost as sad as him not being in the Hall of Fame. He was my idol.
That rise and fall of a baseball legend is captured in Keith O’Brien’s new biography of Rose, Charlie Hustle. It is the first biography that Rose has actively participated in since he was banned from the game in 1989 when he still refused to admit that he had bet on baseball or the Cincinnati Reds which was the team he was managing at the time. Baseball had a mountain of evidence showing that Rose had committed the cardinal sin of betting on his own team and games, but he maintained his innocence until he didn’t. Much like this biography, he participated until he didn’t.
Once O’Brien started to get into the years after Rose’s ban and talk about his second marriage falling apart, baseball’s Hit King maintained radio silence and no longer spoke with the author. Rose is more forthcoming in a recent HBO documentary, Charlie Hustle & The Matter of Pete Rose, but Rose believes that in the documentary he is spinning the narrative and still maintains denials that are easily disproved. The documentary, like the biography, ends in sadness.
Rose’s participation in the biography makes the book accessible and very readable. O’Brien does an excellent job of capturing the majesty of Rose as a local, blue collar, Cincinnatian who rose to the highest level of professional sports. When he was approaching Ty Cobb’s all-time hits record, prime time television shows were interrupted to break away to Pete’s at bats. He was a celebrity and paid like one, but unfortunately he had tastes in women, cars, and gambling that ultimately exceeded his paychecks and bank account. When he started to stiff bookies they started to pay him back by talking to the police and FBI.
Charlie Hustle is a must-read for any fan of baseball, but ultimately this biography serves as a painful reminder that Pete Rose was Icarus who flew too close to the sun and never appreciated the danger because he ultimately believed he was the only true star in the universe.
Drew Gallagher is a freelance writer residing in Fredericksburg, Virginia. He is the second-most-prolific book reviewer and first video book reviewer in the 137-year history of the Free Lance-Star Newspaper. He aspires to be the second-most-prolific book reviewer in the history of FXBG Advance and is also a founding member of Dads for Puppies.
Local Obituaries
To view local obituaries or to send a note to family and loved ones, please visit our website at the link that follows.
Support Award-winning, Locally Focused Journalism
The FXBG Advance cuts through the talking points to deliver both incisive and informative news about the issues, people, and organizations that daily affect your life. And we do it in a multi-partisan format that has no equal in this region. Over the past month, our reporting was:
$8 a month supports great journalism
- First to report on a Spotsylvania School teacher arrested for bringing drugs onto campus.
- First to report on new facility fees leveled by MWHC on patient bills.
- First to detail controversial traffic numbers submitted by Stafford staff on the Buc-ee’s project
- Provided extensive coverage of the cellphone bans that are sweeping local school districts.
- And so much more, like Clay Jones, Drew Gallagher, Hank Silverberg, and more.
For just $8 a month, you can help support top-flight journalism that puts people over policies.
Your contributions 100% support our journalists.
Help us as we continue to grow!
Support FXBG Advance for $8 a month
