The Island of Missing Trees
The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak
Reviewed by Jess
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FAO everyone: if you have a friend telling you to read an Elif Shafak novel, or you have one on your shelf/TBR pile, my advice is to read it right now. Linda, I’m sorry it took me so long! If like me you’re really into some lyrical prose and a lesson on life through literature, Elif is the writer for you. The Island of Missing Trees also has the added bonus of being a love story at heart, in so many different ways.
This book follows the story of Kostas and Defne, two teenagers fiercely in love torn apart by the fighting in Cyprus in 1974. Of course, though they find their way back to each other and to the UK where they start a family, love during wartime never comes without trauma. In the present, Kostas, newly widowed, and their child Ada are grieving the loss of Defne, and Ada is trying to work out why she died, who she is and where she belongs without her mother. The timelines are woven together with interconnecting themes of broken love, intergenerational grief and guilt, division and destruction of home, and the influence of nature on our rhythms of life.
An anthropomorphic fig tree helps to keep the story going, back and forth in time, with its wisdom and knowledge and narration. Whilst it made for easy transitions between the time shifts, I found it’s humanised nature to be the weak spot of an otherwise perfect novel. As we unravel the secrets of the couple back then and for Ada today, the novel ends in a melancholy but hopeful place. The parallel love story of Yiorgos and Yusuf is devastating to read, and highlights how war can affect every single corner of the place it’s in. Shafak has written a beautiful, educational and magical novel that is well worth your time.
