by Elif Shafak
Published by Viking/Penguin
We’re in Cyprus – or at least thinking back to how it has been there – from the point of view of a teenager in a London school in the late 2010s. Her parents had married across the Greek/Turkish divide which led to their arrival in England. Ada’s mother has died and she and her father are visited by her mother’s sister – and that is what triggers Ada’s learning the history which underpins who she is.
It’s a beautifully told lyrical book predicated on Ada’s botanist father, Kostas, having brought with him and established in the London garden a fig tree. The tree narrates part of the story and becomes a symbol both of Ada’s troubled mother and of the war-torn Cyprus the family left.
The accounts of the atrocities in Cyprus are deftly delivered. Especially memorable is the cheerful, peaceful, unflappable pair of quietly gay men who own and run the taverna where Kostas discreetly courts his future wife. One night the taverna is raided and its owners disappear. Later, of course, it turns out they were killed. It all reminded me faintly of Victoria Hislop, some of whose novels cover the same subject, but this writing is much silkier, more musical and arrestingly colourful.
Ada is a well-drawn character. She doesn’t understand – who would? – why her mother took her own life, thereby effectively abandoning her only daughter. She is also angry that the aunt who now appears didn’t visit while her mother was alive and failed to attend her sister’s funeral. The novel is, in part, a thoughtful exploration of those feelings leading, eventually, to a resolution of sorts.
Review by Susan Elkin