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The Island of Missing Trees

Elif Shafak

Start date: September 15, 2022

Finish date: October 15, 2022

Discussion: Reading List

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What Members Thought

Jan 20, 2022 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: ebooks, read2021, reviewcopy, netgalley, location-cyprus, january

I usually enjoy Elif Shafak but this might be my favorite, a love story from Cyprus but also a tree story from the point of view of a fig tree that has seen some things. I really noticed the writing this time around, how she almost crosses the line of purple prose but then turns the language in interesting ways.

This is my third book set in Cyprus in under a year and it's so disheartening how neighbors become enemies. At several points in this novel, characters won't identify people as Cypriot Tu ...more

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Jul 10, 2022 spoko rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction, book-club

I enjoyed a lot of things about this book, but with a couple of very specific—and very significant—hang-ups. One is the character of the mother. Clearly Shafak intends her to be a real presence in the book; the other characters talk about her constantly, and the flashback scenes with her are strong. But in the end, she just felt more like a sketch than an actual character. Somehow, I never really got a sense of what made her tick. And given how much influence she had on the book’s other main cha I enjoyed a lot of things about this book, but with a couple of very specific—and very significant—hang-ups. One is the character of the mother. Clearly Shafak intends her to be a real presence in the book; the other characters talk about her constantly, and the flashback scenes with her are strong. But in the end, she just felt more like a sketch than an actual character. Somehow, I never really got a sense of what made her tick. And given how much influence she had on the book’s other main characters, that fault was a big one.

The second issue was the fig tree. Specifically, her voice. (In case you’re reading this far without having read any of the book, the tree is clearly identified as female throughout—not an it, but a she.) It seemed that she existed largely to allow Shafak to show off her research and to expound at length on various animistic philosophical concepts. Which I found vaguely ridiculous, and usually not particularly well written. Still, I was mostly able to overlook it. But when I hit this passage:

many plants, when threatened, attacked or cut, can produce ethylene, which works like a type of anaesthetic, and this chemical release has been described by researchers as akin to hearing stressed plants screaming

I just lost it. If something can be out of character for a tree, then this voice certainly is. And the idea that she would stop to acknowledge the researchers who describe this phenomenon in a specific way? It’s completely absurd, and it thoroughly pulled me out of the narrative. And yes, I realize that (view spoiler). So that didn’t make much difference.

I wanted to like the book, and for long stretches I succeeded. But overall, too much of it just really didn’t work. I’d say it’s a 3.5-star—I wouldn’t discourage anyone from reading it, but I wouldn’t recommend it either. ...more

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Sep 06, 2023 Laurel Bradshaw rated it really liked it

Shelves: color-rating-blue, audiobook, london, love-stories, daytimers-book-club, teenagers, family-secrets, themes-trees, cyprus, 2023-reading-lists

4.5 blue stars
Not always a happy read, but satisfying in how the characters cope with current events, with cultural differences, and with grief. Ada is the late in life child of a Greek man and a Turkish woman from Cyprus. Her mother has died a few months prior, and her father has retreated into himself and poured his own grief into caring for a fig tree brought with the couple to England. He met Ada's mother, Defne, and fell in love with her when they were both teenagers on Cyprus. Greeks and T 4.5 blue stars
Not always a happy read, but satisfying in how the characters cope with current events, with cultural differences, and with grief. Ada is the late in life child of a Greek man and a Turkish woman from Cyprus. Her mother has died a few months prior, and her father has retreated into himself and poured his own grief into caring for a fig tree brought with the couple to England. He met Ada's mother, Defne, and fell in love with her when they were both teenagers on Cyprus. Greeks and Turks had coexisted on Cyprus for years, but in 1974, the Turkish Ottoman empire invaded Cyprus and effectively segregated the Greeks from the Turks. In the midst of this turmoil, Ada's father, who lives on the Greek side of the island is sent to school in London. 25 years later he returns to Cyprus as a botanist and reconnects with Defne. The story alternates between 1974, the early 2000s and the mid-2010s. Pulling most of all this together, is the narration of the fig tree. The fig tree is a fount of knowledge about Cyprus, the cultural conflict, the biology of trees, especially fig trees, and all of the various animals that are a part of the life of this tree. Although the tree can sometimes go a bit overboard with all of her information, I found this bit of magical realism/anthropomorphism to be delightful. When Ada's father's sister comes to London after years of being estranged because of the cultural conflict, Ada comes to learn more about the two sides of her heritage, to come to terms with her grief, and to gain an understanding of her father. Not quite a coming of age story, but beautifully and movingly told.

Description: Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. In the taverna, hidden beneath garlands of garlic, chili peppers and creeping honeysuckle, Kostas and Defne grow in their forbidden love for each other. A fig tree stretches through a cavity in the roof, and this tree bears witness to their hushed, happy meetings and eventually, to their silent, surreptitious departures. The tree is there when war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to ashes and rubble, and when the teenagers vanish. Decades later, Kostas returns. He is a botanist looking for native species, but really, he's searching for lost love. Years later a Ficus carica grows in the back garden of a house in London where Ada Kazantzakis lives. This tree is her only connection to an island she has never visited--- her only connection to her family's troubled history and her complex identity as she seeks to untangle years of secrets to find her place in the world. ...more

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