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The Island of Missing Trees
The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak. Viking Teenager Ada has the worst day ever at school when she stands up and screams in front of her class. Life has been tough for her after her mum dies and her father is left heartbroken. Then her mother’s sister arrives and it feels like it’s all getting worse. Why didn’t her aunt show up at her mum’s funeral? But this book isn’t so much about Ada as about her parents, how they met, how two people from Cyprus ended up in London, and about a fig tree. This book is one that shifts from the present to the past and…
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Would I Lie to You?
Would I Lie to You by Aliya Ali-Afzal Head of Zeus Faiza Saunders is a British woman of Pakistani heritage who has been married to Tom, a white British man for twenty years. They have three children and she’s a stay-at-home mum. They’re a happy family and the pair are still very much in love. Then Tom loses his job and wants Faiza to move some money from the emergency fund to the main account so they don’t end up in arrears. The problem is Faiza has been sneaking money from that account for years and it’s essentially empty. Faiza panics and the lies start coming more and more frequently as…
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The Ripping Tree
At the age of sixteen, Thomasina Trelora, “Tom”, finds herself sailing for Australia to be married to a vicar she’s never met. She’s had a radical upbringing and isn’t too happy with the plan for her future, particularly the lack of any say in the matter. There is a shipwreck along the rocks on the coast and Tom finds herself rescued by an aboriginal man from the wreckage. She’s left on the verandah at Willowbrae, a well-to-do estate belonging to the Craw family in the middle of nowhere. At first, she feels she has gained a reprieve from her fate, and due to her (feigned) lack of memory, she tries…