A review by korrik
A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar by Suzanne Joinson

Based on the title and jacket blurb about A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar, I was expecting a work of historical fiction about a woman traveling and experiencing new freedoms and horizons. Instead I read two separate but somehow intertwined stories, one set in Kashgar in 1923 and the other in present-day London, both of which felt stifling and claustrophobic. It didn't help that the two main actors, Evangeline and Freida, were rather passive and let their courses be set by other people, whether an over-zealous, culturally insensitive missionary or an undocumented Yemeni artist on the run. Some of the historical passages, particularly the descriptions about living arrangements and social organization, were interesting, but ultimately I didn't connect with the story (why was Freida's included?) or the characters.