Tot iets verder dan de helft doorgeworsteld maar het bleef bij twee levenloze verhalen zonder connectie, en nog altijd geen fiets. Misschien komt het nog een keer, maar ik haak af.

I couldn’t get into this one.

It took me a good while to get into this book - after a dramatic start, I couldn't work out where the story was going to go. Now that I've finished it, I'm somewhere in the middle in terms of between being annoyed of the time wasted in reading it and raving about it.

Author: Suzanne Joinson (pub date June 4) (n)
Title: A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar
Description: Eva and her sister are new missionaries to Kashgar, supervised by the nearly fanatical Millicent. Their very first act gets them put under house arrest and awaiting trial on murder charges. Meanwhile, Millicent’s not-so-subtle methods seem to be stirring up animosity among the natives. Running parallel to this story is the modern-day story of Frieda and her new friend Tayeb, an illegal immigrant. Frieda inherits the contents of a flat belonging to someone she has never heard of, and has a week to dispose of them before the housing authority comes in to clear things out.
Review source: ARC from netgalley
Plot: Both plots, the historical and the contemporary, kept my interest. Eva is writing The Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar; she has brought her bicycle with her on the missionary trip. Along with her pointers on cycling, she uses her notebook as a diary to record the events taking place in this country where they are nearly the only foreigners.
Characters: Both of the main female characters, Frieda and Eva, are well-drawn and likeable. The supporting characters are also interesting and believable.
Writing style: It can be tricky to write parallel stories; the author has to make each story interesting in its own right, and they have to move at about the same pace. From the beginning I was more interested in the historical portion of the novel, probably because it was so alien to my own experience. Aside from this bit of unevenness, though, I enjoyed the writing style.
Audience: I’d place this novel squarely between chick lit and literary fiction. I think both groups of readers would enjoy it; it would make a good book group read as well.
Wrap-up: The book’s running theme of religious belief and what it means to the individual as well as to the community was very well done and thought-provoking. I did find the ending to be not as strong as the rest of the book, though. 3.5/5*

This relates to the audio version. I disliked the narrator immensely and yet the book was intriguing and surprising and enjoyable.
Connecting present day and the past it's a story of isolation and finding yourself in the face of adversity.

Entertaining and compelling.

It was beautifully written, and I liked how the author tied in the 1920's missionary diary with modern day England.

But I don't have any real sense of why the story was written. It is a lovely idea, but it didn't quite come together for me, apart from having some resolution regarding the timeline from the 20s to the present.

I would recommend this as a book to listen to on a long drive, because the words are beautiful, but the ending didn't tie up satisfactorily for me.

I wasn't entirely sure what I felt about this one for some time, and I still have a hard time categorizing this first-novel effort. Is it about cycling through Kashgar? Um, no, it's much more about relationships between women, the ways we affect each other, how echoes begun by some women can echo down through generations--but a lot of this takes place under the surface of this story of an Englishwoman missionary in western China and a modern woman in London and what connects their lives. The men in the story almost seem like afterthoughts. Very interesting first effort--possibly an author to watch.

If you think you are going to learn about the Silk Road or have an adventure, forget it. Pass this book on by.

This book consists of two seemingly unrelated narratives, and the connection between them isn’t clear until the end. Both stories are riveting and so sometimes it’s hard to turn from one to the other.

One is the story of three women, missionaries traveling in China in the 1920s. The other is set in modern-day London, and concerns a young woman who befriends a homeless Arab man. Both narratives deal with belonging and alienation, and with the feeling of being lost.

There’s a tentative quality, both in the characters’ lives and the ways in which the stories are told, which is in stark contrast to the sharply drawn landscapes. The writing is textured, nuanced, with characters that only gradually become known and understood.