The Island of Missing Trees

 by Elif Shafak

This is a beautiful, very unique book.  I really enjoyed it though the basic stories were quite sad.

The story opens with a young girl, daughter of a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, in London having a meltdown in class.  She has been asked to interview a family member about their life.... she has no family that she can contact.  She is devastated further when she finds her meltdown has made it onto the Internet.

The girl's mother has died and she feels that her father cares more about his job and the plants he works on than he does about her.  

The book then describes how the father buries a fig tree he brought from Cypress (illegally) every fall.  The tree cannot survive the English winters so he buries it every year til spring.  He doesn't just bury it he goes out and talks to it.

We then learn that the girl's parents were lovers in Cypress just before all the violence started.  Their parents would not approve of their relationship but two gay men who run a tavern, which has a fig tree growing in the centre of the tavern, let the kids meet at their restaurant.  The boy's mother has seen one son killed and another join the fighting and she fears for her youngest son so she ships him off to England to live with a relative.  The boy doesn't know that his girlfriend has become pregnant.

Suddenly the girl's aunt arrives from Cypress for a visit.  The girl doesn't trust her and is rude to her.  She is angry the woman never came sooner.  She learns a little about her parent's love affair as young people and also that the aunt couldn't come sooner because she had to look after her mother.

A unique and fascinating part of the book is that part of the story is told by the fig tree in the tavern.  It is a branch of this tree that the girl's father brought to England.

As the story progresses we find out the girl's mother gave her baby up for adoption but the baby died of a fever that plagued Cypress killing many infants.  The two gay guys were tortured and murdered.

Eventually the girl's father returned to Cypress on a business trip and reconnects with his lover.  At first the father thinks his girlfriend had an abortion and he is furious with her.  But eventually he finds out the truth. She is a forensic scientist trying to document and identify all those who died in the conflict.  He convinces her to marry him and they return to England where the daughter was born.

The mother, perhaps because afflicted with depression or PTSD eventually dies of an overdose.  The father is devastated.

As the book ends we find that the girl now has an understanding of what has happened in her family and is starting to re-develop her relationship with her father.

As the book ends we find the spirit of the mother has moved into the little fig tree.

A sad, but powerful, fascinating and well crafted story.