This is a story of love, loss, grief and war. It's not that it's bad. It's more that in a sea of stories of this vein, it doesn't stand out.

The most unique thing about the story is that Shafak uses an omniscient fig tree to join different narratives and time jumps. I was a little thrown by the trees frequent 'im a tree but I'm in love with the grieving father who cares for me' comments as that could have gone down any odd route. Finding out that

his wife's spirit, energy? had entered the tree on her death

made it a little easier to chew.

Furthermore, each time we meet the fig tree, she either narrates or gives us a word splurge on some slight or not at all related subject. The narration worked wonderfully but the word splurges sections quickly felt out of place, like they were lifted from a different book all together.

The characters felt underdeveloped and those I cared for were forgotten in the story. I can see why people like this book in that stories of lives and loss in war are a classic for a reason. If you've not read many in this sub-genre and it appeals to you, I'm sure you'd love this. For me, there's so many stories like this that I've loved and this one just didn't hit anywhere close.

In short, the characters were hard to root for, the pace slow and the story a little fractured.