The Island of Missing Trees – Review

The Island of Missing Trees, by Elif Shafak

'The Island of Missing Trees' is a touching and thoughtful novel, which lays out the heartbreaks and hurts of the conflict in Cyprus in the 1970s, and the ripple effect of the suffering for decades to come. It's a paean to an interconnected world, where humans, animals, plants and landscapes breathe and feel together, where the choices of one generation change the path of the next, and where boundaries imposed out of hate are a scar upon the natural harmony. It's about memory, inheritance, the wisdom of trees, the breaking down of barriers and the healing of trauma - and at its heart there is a romance that glows with a fierce and radical hope. It's a really good book.

The bit I enjoyed most in this novel was its romance storyline. Although the 1974 timeline isn't introduced until Part II of the book (nearly 80 pages in), it is in my view the most compelling element of the whole novel. The characters of Kostas and Defne are vividly drawn, and achingly believable in every furtive conversation, every whispered promise, every anxious wait for the next snatched rendezvous. It's beautiful writing. This storyline is also the vehicle for Shafak's historical insight: through the eyes of the young lovers, she lays out the daily reality of living in divided Cyprus. We learn about the terror of military presence, the persecution of homosexuals, the massacre of songbirds, the border line etched in the street. It's sad to read, but it's amazing to learn, and even the worst horrors are tinged with the hope of The Happy Fig - a haven for misfits whose love, we know, will outlast the conflict.

So what of the 70-odd pages before we meet the young Kostas and Defne? Those are spent in London with Ada, who we quickly learn is Kostas and Defne's daughter, conceived in Cyprus but born in the UK. I wasn't quite as endeared to her as to her younger parents; Shafak has written a classic hormonal teen, moody, fixed-minded and standoffish. But Ada's closedness and pent-up anger is both justified and completely necessary for what Shafak is trying to do with this novel.

When jolly, vibrant Aunt Meryem comes to stay from Cyprus, her presence is utterly jarring. For a start, it's the first time anyone from the wider family has come to England - they didn't even come to Ada's mother's funeral. Ada's hurt and the family's silence seem at first an irreparable rift: Ada is rude and aloof, Meryem completely out of touch - the hurt runs deep and the past remains unspoken about. But here Shafak lays the groundwork for a touching storyline of slow reconciliation. The hope of healing is the whole point of 'The Island of Missing Trees' - redemption can be possible even when the divide seems immeasurably wide.

As well as Ada in London and her parents in Cyprus, there is a third perspective that makes up 'The Island of Missing Trees' - and it is rather unusual. Almost half of the novel, in chapters interspersed throughout both timelines, is narrated by the fig tree. The fig tree stands at the centre of the eponymous tavern in Cyprus, witnessing the young Kostas and Defne as they meet under its branches. When they flee to England, Kostas takes a cutting, and rehomes the same tree in his back garden in London. The tree has shared their whole journey, so Shafak gives it a significant role in the telling of their story. I was (and still am) in two minds about this choice.

At first, I was not a fan. That a tree could narrate in the English language seemed a tad far-fetched, and I was dubious as to whether the tree could really make the insightful observations that it did - without eyes, how was it able to describe what Kostas looked like? Would a tree really have the capacity to make emotional inference based on a conversation happening at its foot? But as I read, I did warm to the happy fig. One of Shafak's underlying messages in this book is that we should never underestimate trees - trees have memory, they carry scars, they communicate with others, they experience suffering. War impacts trees just as it impacts humans, only we rarely stop to acknowledge it. So why shouldn't a tree tell this story?

In addition to this, the fig tree serves as a many-layered extended metaphor. Shafak's symbolic parallels are not at all subtle, but you can't fault the poetry of the connections she finds. Not only does the fig tree migrate from Cyprus to London - mirroring Kostas and Defne's journey - but it also undergoes a process of burial (to weather the harsh winter) before being dug up again later. This literal burial and rebirth symbolises the family's trajectory from bottling up the past to speaking openly and finding renewal. Furthermore, the tree's intergenerational memory and inherited characteristics mirror the connectedness of Shafak's human generations - and to top it off, the fig tree is a classical symbol of love. Though heavy-handed at times, the fig tree as metaphor did just work on a lot of levels.

Overall, this was a really lovely book. I am struck once again by Shafak's compassion as a writer (see There Are Rivers In The Sky), the way she gives a voice to the overlooked and the misunderstood, and the way she draws together so many different experiences and stories into a poignant whole. This is a book suffused with love and humanity, with a good dose of Cypriot culture thrown in. I liked it.

You can buy 'The Island of Missing Trees' by following this link (I'll receive a small commission if you do):
The Island of Missing Trees, Elif Shafak - Waterstones