The Island of Missing Trees

Cartography is another name for stories told by winners. For stories told by those who have lost, there isn’t one.

Elif Shafak has an impressive collection of books under her belt, and is no stranger to awards either. A third generation descendant from refugees herself, this story feels both personal and fictional. I recognised three chapters deep that this was an unusual book, in that it’s narrators (divided by chapters) are split between a girl, the author, and a tree. Firstly, Ada - a teenage girl in all the usual throes of adolescence, but with a dead mother & embarrassing public moment to deal with over the Christmas break. The book switches back in time to the seventies for it’s third person narrator, who tells the love story of Ada’s parents (one Turkish, one Greek, as civil war broke out). Finally, and most effectively, the final narrator is a fig tree.

Arboreal-time is equivalent to story-time - and, like a story, a tree does not grow in perfectly straight lines, flawless curves or exact right angles, but bends and twists and bifurcates into fantastical shapes, throwing out branches of wonder and arcs of invention. They are incompatible, human-time and tree-time.

I was less keen on Ada’s chapters for the first half of the book. I found her a bit annoying, but also felt like the intended audience for the novel is perhaps young adult (so I’m willing to cut it some slack). It wasn’t badly written per se, but I felt Shafak didn’t leave much to the imagination for the first couple of sections - I felt a bit spoon-fed; where I prefer to be trusted as a reader to make my own assumptions from the text. Note - this is my only criticism of the book.

The chapters focused on Ada’s parents were easy to lose myself in - it’s a great love story, and they’re both very like-able characters. The second half really came into it’s own when it moved forward a few decades to post-war Cyprus. I particularly liked the very different representations of coping with war-driven trauma, as well as a diversion from the norm with an emotionally literate male character versus an action-driven female character; both equally successful in their respective fields. Their story, though fiction, could have been true for many; and it really urged me to learn more about the history of Cyprus. It’s something that although many parents and grandparents I know were a part of, it doesn’t seem to have been explained at all in my British education.

The tang of jasmine, winding around the wrought-iron balustrade like a golden thread through homespun cloth, perfumed the air, mingling with the smells of burnt metal and gunpowder.

The final narrator was my favourite. This is officially the first book I’ve read from the perspective of a tree - and what a wonderful linguistic tool it is. Through the fig tree’s eyes, Shafak evokes folklore, legend and mythology side by side with botany, ecology, memory and migration. She reminds us that human wars affect everything they touch, and leave scars in the ground just as deep as those in the people. Situating migration in the context of butterflies and birds; and trauma in the rings of trees, I was profoundly moved by the holistic vision that in war, as in everything, we’re all tied together - plant, animal and human alike. I’d also have to include a strong shout out to all the food descriptions, it left me craving some Cypriot delicacies!

Overall I’d highly recommend it, and I think it’s a good choice for young adults - though given the context some of it might be slightly tough reading. There is violence, death, suicide, and one mention of rape - but none of them are overly graphic.