The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

 Review | Summary

Another magically beautiful book that hits me the second time this year.

After reading this book plethora of emotions churning inside me, I can define myself now, probably I am a hermit and this book smells sad. The metaphors used to describe mundane life with so much intensity goes far down in your heart and enough to make you dumbfounded with a wordless pain.

A saga that follows from 1974 to 2010s, a gripping interwoven plot, it’s a lovely historical story that never ever felt like history rather like the love story of Defne and Costas and yet so thought-provoking and affirmative to prove everything on earth, every life is beautiful at the same time enough to clog your throat with a helpless sadness.

Defne and Costas, met in High school, fell in love, they parted and again fate make them come close; they met in search of lost people who were missing from the civil war.

“a butterfly skeleton is not inside its body they don’t have a hard Framework protected beneath soft tissues the way we do in fact their entire skin is an invisible skeleton one might say

I mean imagine Cypress as a huge butterfly then why you didn’t have to dig the ground for our missing we would know we are covered with them.”

This book is told with an immense depth of feeling, insightful, humorous, and somehow possesses hidden faith towards readers! There are lots of twists and turns unfurled in a truly surprising way. As the story unfolds you will get to know a bundle of information about many other trees gingerly. I was arrested by this narration style, how could someone think such a way of storytelling style!

This book is a compelling historical fiction uttered by a fig tree. Yes, the whole story was narrated from a tree’s perspective. A fig tree was brought from Cypress Island to England.

It also tells us the sufferings of being alive. This book is basically, loosely based on real-life incidents that happened on Cypress Island and the author blended all the small little incidents so gradually and gently. Lots of incidents that happened with Costas and Defne’s family have actually happened in those days.

Heartwarming yet so heart-wrenching story, its’ eloquence is enchanting and romancing with the natural world in a way that was unexpected for me. Read it and let yourself fall in love with this planet and its nature.

Review by : Mili Das (Click to know more about her)