"The Island of Missing Trees" by Elif Shafak

Shortlisted for the 2021 Costa Prize and the 2022 Women's Prize for fiction. 

 This book centres around Kostas, a Greek Cypriot boy, and Defne, a Turkish Cypriot girl, who fall in love during the tensions leading up to the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus which divided a community on the brink of civil war into two separate communities. There is a second strand, set in the late 2010s: in which, following Defne's death, her sister Meryem visits Kostas, Defne's bereaved husband, and their daughter in London, Ada.

The narrative is told in the past tense and largely from the unusual perspective of a fig tree growing in the middle of a taverna is Cyprus and in a London back garden (Kostas took a cutting). The fig tree acts as an omniscient narrator, partly because it is told what is happening by insects, birds and animals that 'talk' to it. This conceit permits the author to, somewhat didactically, recount the twentieth century history of intercommunal strife of Cyprus and offer a philosophy which, in short, seems to be 'Nature - especially trees - good, humanity bad'. I suppose that if you want to learn about Cyprus and arboriculture this might be the book for you but I felt that this focus meant the author was less focused on the characters.Meryam is a bit of a stereotype. Kostas the boy and Kostas the man seem like two different people. The gay couple who run the pub are two people but mostly felt like one.  I was never really fully immersed in anyone except, perhaps, the young Kostas. And that meant that I felt like a disinterested observer when awful things happened. There was so much potential for developing empathy for characters in hugely tense situations generating enormous emotions ... but I scarcely felt involved. 

There were a number of plot lines that seemed undeveloped. For example, Ada screams in class ... but this wasn't developed except as an online embarrassment. There is a visit to an exorcist ... but then nothing. 

Some people don't like it when a book jumps back and forth between different times. I understood that a straightforwardly chronological story would have been difficult (lots happen in 1974, nothing for 40 years, lots happen again) but otherwise there didn't seem to be a compelling reason, just as the development of a theme, for this structure. It also meant that the early parts of the book contain spoilers which reduced the narrative tension and undermined any surprises. 

It just didn't grab me.

Part of the problem is its preachiness: it can't seem to touch on a problem or issue without sermonising, and always from the perspective of an ecologically aware millennial. I like books that challenge me to think and this book repeatedly told me what to think.

There were some great touches. I loved Meryam who conversation was peppered with proverbs (see below). There are moments of great description (eg: "The tang of jasmine, winding around the wrought-iron balustrade  like a golden thread through homespun cloth, perfumed the air"; 3: Definition of love). I also enjoyed the teenage truculence of Ada. There were some very authentic bits of dialogue. But I didn't really care about Kostas or the dead Defne; I was reading with my head and not my heart.

Selected quotes:

The proverbs of Meryam:

• "Eat according to your own taste, dress according to others." (2: Music Box)
• "If a cat wants to eat her kittens, she'll say they look like mice." (2: Music Box)
• "Good advice is always annoying, bad advice never is. So if what I say irritates you, take it as good advice." (3: Bell Peppers)
• "Sorrow is to the soul what a worm is to wood." (3: Bell Peppers)
• "If your beard is on fire, others will light their pipes on it." (3: Bell Peppers)
• "We're not going to search for a calf under an ox." (4: Proverbs)
• "The bear knows seven songs and they are all about honey." (4: Proverbs)
• "A gardener in love with roses is pricked by a thousand thorns." (4: Proverbs)
• "If you weep for all the sorrows in the world, in the end you will have no eyes." (6: Interview)
• "If a stone falls on an egg, it is bad for the egg; if an egg falls on a stone, it is still bad for the egg." (6: Kitchen)

And other selected quotes:

• "Time is a songbird, and just like any other songbird it can be taken captive." (Prologue: Island)
• "Storm clouds descended over London and the world turned the colour of melancholy." (1: Fig Tree)
• "First generation immigrants ... wear a lot of beige, grey and brown. Colours that do not stand out. Colours that whisper, never shout." (1: Fig Tree)
• "More and more he noticed that in order to have her move a step closer, he had to take a step away first." (1: Night)
• "Like a story, a tree does not grow in perfectly straight lines." (1: Fig Tree)
• "The past is a dark, distorted mirror. You look in it, you only see your own pain." (2: The Castle)
• "Unlike in history books, stories come to us not in their entirety but in bits and pieces, broken segments and partial echoes" (5: Fig Tree)
• "Tribal hatreds don't die ... they just add new layers to hardened shells." (5: Ammonite)

December 2023: 339 pages

Strangely, I have just finished reading another book in which a character communicates with a tree and there is a parrot: Still Life by Sarah Winman. It's a lot better because she really concentrates on developing a small cast of utterly eccentric and yet believable characters. It's also a lot funnier.

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God