Ella’s Reviews > The Island of Missing Trees > Status Update

‘Because in real life, unlike in history books, stories come to us not in their entirety but in bits and pieces, broken segments and partial echoes, a full sentence here, a fragment there, a clue hidden in between. In life, unlike in books, we have to weave our stories out of threads as fine as the gossamer veins that run through a butterfly's wings.’ p262

‘With all-encompassing curiosity he would study a moss-covered log, inhale the aromas of garlic mustard and pokeweed, listen to a beetle munch its way through a leaf, and he would marvel at his mother's fear of this world so full of wonders.’ p108

‘Kostas barely remembered anything of his father. He knew that his elder brother had many memories of him, and his younger brother, a newborn back then, had absolutely none. But he, the middle one, was left with a layer of fog, a frustrating illusion that if he could only part the cloud with his hands, he might find his father's face in there, the pieces no longer missing, finally complete.’ p107

‘She knew in her gut that she was the child of the type of love that rose from the bottom of the ocean, from a blue so dark it was almost black.’

‘This he never told her, but he feared she might one day suggest that it had become too dangerous for them to see each other, this secret too heavy to hold, that they should break up before things got out of hand.
Every time he felt this fear, he gently pushed it down into a place in the basement of his soul where he kept all uncontrolled and painful thoughts. He tucked it next to the memories of his father.’