The Island of Missing Trees

[prinnycessa]

Has anyone read this book? If so, what are your thoughts. Would love to discuss

Just finished it. I had very mixed feelings about it: found it very interesting on the recent history of Cyprus and the partition of the island, have been to the Turkish side not the Greek so had some familiarity with the feel of the island. Thought the story a bit trite though, anticipated most of the plot and didn’t enjoy the olive tree conceit.

I think though this is me and Elif Shifak to be honest, read three of her books now and can’t say I have really enjoyed any of them.

I read it recently. I think the setting of the story was the most interesting feature of the book for me. I wasn't very familiar with the troubled history of Cyprus and I thought that was well done, the impact of war and how it changed the lives of the three brothers, for example.

It was a strange one in the sense that it was grounded in a real event but it also had the fantastical sentient tree as a main character, that expressed concern about the survival of bees and the deterioration of the planet, a very topical issue rooted in our reality (pardon the pun!) However, it did all tie in together very neatly at the end and it made sense so long as you were prepared to go along with it!

I thought the story of the gay couple was harrowing, in spite of knowing what was likely to happen. The story spanned twenty years or thereabouts, so we moved quite quickly through different events in the characters' lives, but I thought it worked out well. You could nearly see this being developed as a film as the plot and characters would lend itself to it. The tree though, I'm not sure about :)

Overall, I was glad I read it and I would look up more books by this author.

@mimbleandlittlemy @IsFuzzyBeagMise thanks for your thoughts both.

I didn't love it but I found the history of Cyprus very interesting as I knew nothing about it. I love learning new things through books and having to go off and research more so I enjoyed that element of it.

Agree on the tree as a main character. I didn't love that, however, I did appreciate that the tree was used to fill in the gaps that the human protagonists were unaware of. For example, how Y&Y died and how baby YY died. I thought that was clever and also provided the answers I was looking for as a reader.

I think the book had quite a slow pace which I don't tend to enjoy but I did like the exploration of different characters feelings throughout. War affects people in different ways, whether they lived through it or not and I did think this was widely and well explored.

Not a book I would be widely recommending but not a bad read either. Now onto The Three Sisters by Heather Morris!

Yes @prinnycessa good point about the tree filling in the gaps for the reader.
I had forgotten about that. You could say that the tree was an omniscient character in the story.

I picked this book up - and really wanted to love it - because my best friend was Greek Cypriot, and she was living in Cyprus when the invasion happened (she was 17), and she and her family had to flee back to the UK. She subsequently returned to Cyprus and I visited her several times. So I knew a bit of the history, and I thought that was the best aspect of the book, the author made that really interesting. But I thought the characterisations and sub plots were poor, there were no characters I cared about really. And as for the olive tree... a nope from me.

Afterwards I gave the book to charity as I didn't want to lend it to anyone, which says it all really.