The title may suggest a work of non-fiction, and its chapters headed by snippets from a real-life guide, but Suzanne Joinson’s stylish debut is actually a wonderfully literary slip into time.
In 1923 Eva, an avid lady cyclist, arrives at the ancient Silk Route city of Kasgar with her sister Lizzie to help establish a Christian mission under the eye of Lizzie’s mentor, a Hatamen-cigarette-smoking spinster named Millicent. Eva’s true motives are some way off spiritual; she’s really there to keep an eye on her mentally-frail sister, and to work on the eponymous travel book we hold in our hands in the meantime.
An unlikely protagonist, Eva is the unconventional daughter of liberal upper-middle-class parents, and uses such sensibilities and grounding to describe their trials and tribulations in politically unstable, doggedly Mohammaden Kashgar. As you can imagine, all does not run smoothly. Yet this novel is not satisfied with the linear narrative and singular setting of one temporal space. No, Joinson is ambitious.
Enter Frieda and her resident tramp Tayeb. Did I also mention, that at speeds faster than flu powder, we are transported to present day London? Here, an unwitting Frieda, with Tayeb in toe, is charged with the task of clearing out the council house of a recently deceased but unknown Irena Guy, and amongst the mausoleum of weird and wacky paraphernalia they find an uncanny link between these two disparate narratives – Eva’s diary. Past and present are fused, exotic Kashgar and smoggy London linked, and the lives of our central characters connected with the scribble of a pen. A Lady Cylist’s Guide to Kashgar explores the fault lines that appear when traditions; cultures and identities from an increasingly globalised world, crash head-on.
The exotic locales, the busy range of interests on display – cycling, ornithography, photography, Yoga – throw up a rich array of ideas and imagery to enchant and inform, creating rich and vibrant cultural centres. Each character challenges and negotiates the restrictions of their society, but most importantly, tries to make their way towards somewhere they can call home.
A Lady Cyclist’s Guide To Kashgar is available now from Bloomsbury
Words: Jess Owen