Scan barcode
A review by ericaswonger
The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak
5.0
-if you’re in my book club don’t read this til Sunday!!-
I started this book without reading a summary or any reviews. Completely went in blind and didn’t know what to expect. At first I was really confused on the direction this book was going… I mean… there’s that one snippet of Ada fantasizing about her teacher and I was like ??? what is going on here. Anyway. I’m glad I continued reading because wow. This story was a masterpiece.
I didn’t know anything about the civil war in Cyprus & I enjoyed the historical fiction aspect of this story. I also don’t know anything about nature (or like, ecology at all) but this book explained things in a way I felt was easy to understand for non-science people like myself.
Then the story line. Just. Incredible story telling. An incredible depiction of what it means to be human. Family, Love, hate, hurt, forgiveness, anxiety, religion , spirituality. This book was simply magnificent.
So many beautiful quotes, but I’ll share just one of my favorite
Human remains … What exactly did that mean? Was it a few hard bones and soft tissue? Clothes and accessories? Things solid and compact enough to fit inside a coffin? Or was it rather the intangible – the words we send out into the ether, the dreams we keep to ourselves, the heartbeats we skip beside our lovers, the voids we try to fill and can never adequately articulate – when all was Human remains … What exactly did that mean? Was it a few hard bones and soft tissue? Clothes and accessories? Things solid and compact enough to fit inside a coffin? Or was it rather the intangible – the words we send out into the ether, the dreams we keep to ourselves, the heartbeats we skip beside our lovers, the voids we try to fill and can never adequately articulate – when all was said and done, what was left of an entire life, a human being … and could that really be disinterred from the ground?
I started this book without reading a summary or any reviews. Completely went in blind and didn’t know what to expect. At first I was really confused on the direction this book was going… I mean… there’s that one snippet of Ada fantasizing about her teacher and I was like ??? what is going on here. Anyway. I’m glad I continued reading because wow. This story was a masterpiece.
I didn’t know anything about the civil war in Cyprus & I enjoyed the historical fiction aspect of this story. I also don’t know anything about nature (or like, ecology at all) but this book explained things in a way I felt was easy to understand for non-science people like myself.
Then the story line. Just. Incredible story telling. An incredible depiction of what it means to be human. Family, Love, hate, hurt, forgiveness, anxiety, religion , spirituality. This book was simply magnificent.
So many beautiful quotes, but I’ll share just one of my favorite
Human remains … What exactly did that mean? Was it a few hard bones and soft tissue? Clothes and accessories? Things solid and compact enough to fit inside a coffin? Or was it rather the intangible – the words we send out into the ether, the dreams we keep to ourselves, the heartbeats we skip beside our lovers, the voids we try to fill and can never adequately articulate – when all was Human remains … What exactly did that mean? Was it a few hard bones and soft tissue? Clothes and accessories? Things solid and compact enough to fit inside a coffin? Or was it rather the intangible – the words we send out into the ether, the dreams we keep to ourselves, the heartbeats we skip beside our lovers, the voids we try to fill and can never adequately articulate – when all was said and done, what was left of an entire life, a human being … and could that really be disinterred from the ground?