RaveThe Irish Times (IRE)This is a wonderful novel. Normally one keeps this comment for the last line of the review, but I am so enthusiastic about The Island of Missing Trees that I want to put my cards on the table straightaway ... one of the most entertaining history lessons you have ever had ... Ada, perfectly drawn, experiences in-person and online bullying in her north London school in episodes that seem sadly realistic ... Although the novel is rich in themes, its backbone is how Ada comes to terms with the turbulent history of her ancestral island and her own parents , and she could be classified as the main protagonist. The character who steals the show, however, is definitely the fig tree ... Generally I am suspicious of anthropomorphised animals or things in contemporary fiction. They can be tricksy devices cloaking paucity of original thought. Not so here ... All the characters in the novel are just as strongly drawn ... This is fiction at its best.
Rachel Cusk
RaveThe Irish TimesWritten in a formal literary prose, the voice reminds me of the style of say W.E.Sebald, or perhaps Kafka in translation ... Cusk’s technique has been rightly heralded as ground breaking ... the novel has a unique form and voice, even though the device of a travelling writer meeting characters who tell him their life stories is time honoured ... This is a novel of ideas, intelligent, original in form and content, and brilliantly engaging. Many ideas about life and art are aired in its pages. But gender inequality is a recurring theme, reinforced by two striking images which bookend the novel ... Kudos is rich and compelling. It confirms Rachel Cusk’s status as one of the most interesting contemporary writers – avant-garde, highly original, challenging but entirely accessible.
