Let's go mad in Asia, yah?

Sloaning around: Alexandra Tolstoy
Justin Marozzi5 April 2012
The Weekender

Sign up to our free weekly newsletter for exclusive competitions, offers and theatre ticket deals

I would like to be emailed about offers, event and updates from Evening Standard. Read our privacy notice.

Alexandra Tolstoy is, her publicity tells us, "the daughter of the historian Nikolai Tolstoy" and "a distant cousin of the famous novelist Count Leo". Sometimes it's better not to shout too loudly about such a distinguished literary heritage. Particularly if you haven't a hope of living up to it.

My suspicions were first aroused in the acknowledgements, in which Tolstoy thanks DHL for providing parcels during her 4,500-mile expedition across Asia which "satisfied our cravings for chocolate and Hello! magazine".

Oh dear. Is it going to be one of those Blytonesque Five Go Mad in Asia and Have an Awfully Exciting Time sort of tales, I wondered? Well, yes it is, actually. Substitute fermented mare's milk for the ginger beer, fried noodles for the lashings of whipped cream, and you begin to get the picture.

In fact, The Last Secrets of the Silk Road is a complete misnomer. It's more prep school and Pony Club than Great Game adventure. Asians intrude into the narrative only when they are being particularly beastly, utterly sweet or frightfully handsome. This is a story of the internal dynamics of four travelling Sloanes - Alexandra, Mouse, Wic and Lucy - and how they see the world about them. Forgive me while I yawn.

The predictable rows are unintentionally entertaining. Charty, a pal who joins them briefly from England, gets into a blazing row with the guide, Shamil, whom she thinks is being an absolute rotter to her horse. "I've ridden all my life and taught at Pony Club," she fumes.

Later, Mouse rebukes Tolstoy for taking Shamil's side all the time against Wic. "But you must understand, she is very stressed and it's just because she loves Black Pampers so much," she wails. Oh, please! Will someone shut these women up.

Throughout the journey, the group is supported by a back-up truck which carries all those indispensable items for a long expedition - you know the sort of thing, a mess tent, a cook, a driver, a camp manager.

Some might think that having mechanised assistance and an entourage of flunkeys rather defeats the whole object of the trip, but then we never really know what that is. Tolstoy professes a "fascination with history and literature" but there is precious little evidence of either here. We learn virtually-nothing about Bukhara and Samarkand, pearls of Central Asia, and when they finally reach their destination of Xian, she deals with it in one throwaway sentence.

By the end of this brief book, after slogging through shallow observations, plain old cliches and unimaginative descriptions (the views are invariably "spectacular", the settings "picturesque" and Tolstoy seems to be "happy", "sad" or "excited", depending on when you catch her), the reader feels as exhausted as the quartet no doubt were after completing their arduous journey.

And the conclusion? Here's the last sentence: "The sense of timelessness we experienced will stay with me for the rest of my life as a cherished memory in our all too quickly changing world."

Holy cow, is that the best she can do? Or, as the well-bred young gals would probably put it: "Gosh!"

  • Justin Marozzi's history of Tamerlane will be published next year.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in