The Island of Missing Trees: A Novel

This is one of the most beautifully written stories I’ve ever had the honor of reading. It was lyrical and interesting in every way, and the characters, including the fig, were compelling and relatable. This story taught me a lot about trees, nature, birds, and Cypress. I did not want the story to end, but I am thrilled to read the next book written by Elif. She is a phenomenal writer and the Island of Missing Trees is an unforgettable story…

At its heart, this book is a tale about an enduring love between a Greek Cypriot boy and a Turkish Cypriot girl at a time such a relationship was not just impossible but mortally dangerous—a love which is pursued, then lost and pursued again. Another important player in their relationship is their daughter, who is introduced early on, born and raised in London, who, with her father, is suffering from the rent untimely death of her mother, his wife. The dual storylines of the couple’s love, and their daughter’s life in contemporary London, is frequently interrupted by a lengthy interlude narrated by a fig tree in the garden of the London home where the father and daughter live. It proved to me to be a literary device that I found ridiculous and distracting, although the historical and botanical information provided by the fig tree’s narration was usually interesting and often fascinating—it was just too hard to suspend disbelief to not find the tree’s narration jarring. Despite my problem with a tree as a narrator, I found the author’s language to be beautiful and strongly evocative of the scenery, climate and society of that gorgeous and troubled island. And her characters were so vividly drawn you felt like you knew them personally. If you can suspend disbelief and accept a fig tree as a narrator, this book is highly recommended.

I loved everything about this book: history, family, botany, archaeology, insect and animal behavior, ecology, human behavior, beautiful descriptive writing, new words all wrapped in a love story. It was a pleasure from start to finish. I am going to pamper my fig tree and talk to her.

Deep, meaningful story with vivid details of a time of loss and war and love and strength. Loved the insight from the perspective of the fig tree onlooker and wisdom of the many nature references. Beautiful story well written.

Elif Shafak is an enormously talented writer, which is well known. This novel is a love story embedded in two ecosystems: the endlessly variable underpinnings of wild nature, and the sadly unvarying ecosystem of human conflict. In this case, the physical settings are London and Nicosia, Cyprus. The humans are Greek and Turkish Cypriots. The time frame from the mid-1970s to present day. It's a worthwhile read and a worthy reminder of divided Cyprus and its denizens. I would have liked to visit the tavern with the Happy Fig.Without rehearsing the many interesting elements of the novel, I'm sure some readers will find the fig tree as narrator to be charming and valuable. I couldn't see the merit of a fig tree narrator over a human one, as the voice seems utterly human (except for some fig trivia) and obliged to convey the usual context behind the action. The fig does change the time scale and does introduce nature as an agent in human life, instead of assuming a human-centered story altogether. There's a lot of merit in that. However, the fig -- and the ants and butterflies and birds and mice, etc. -- are personified in ways that disarm the uniqueness of their voices, making them intelligible but silly. To speak of a butterfly's children or of motherhood or a queen ant's mission in life is anthropocentric to the extreme. And there's a lot of this in the novel.The Island of Missing Trees demonstrates great care and research by the author, but it often is too didactic. I felt at times like I was watching a nature documentary with a terribly serious narrator.I also found the love story tedious - a kind of clichéd romance that has appeared and reappeared forever. I liked the protagonists but not their scripts. I can't spoil the plot by saying too much about the denouement of the love story, but it seemed a little improbable. I was expecting more of a diaspora motif, but I suppose that's blaming the author for not writing the book I wanted to read.The forensic anthropology that provides a backdrop to the discovery of the novel's core mystery is powerful and rings true, not only in Cyprus but throughout the world.