The Colony: Audrey Magee

Product Information

He moved his hands down the ladder, then his legs. He stopped on the third step. He looked down, at the gap between his feet and the low-lying boat. Into this stride two incomers. Lloyd is a London artist looking to revitalise his flagging career (and his marriage to a “darling dealer”) and he opts to come the hard way. Eschewing the ferry, he opts for a hand-rowed currach and pays the inevitable price with his breakfast. He has arranged to rent a cottage for the summer, to “paint the cliffs”. Needing and expecting solitude, Lloyd is less than gruntled to find the neighbouring cottage soon occupied by Jean-Pierre, a French linguist, who has made the island his doctoral test tube for the last five summers, charting and recording this surviving outpost of spoken Irish. Lloyd has come to the island as a Gauguin only to discover one of the Tahitians is already the finer artist If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. Both Lloyd and Masson display forms of cultural arrogance as they interact with one multigenerational island family. Each man’s vision contrasts sharply with the island family’s individual desires and self images.Particularly noteworthy is the relationship between the outsiders and the strong matriarchal island women who quietly dictate the emotional heartbeat of the community.The relationship between the outsiders and the native population presents a portrait of power, colonialism and conflicts of vision and will. I was the Dublin stringer for four or five years covering events like the war in Bosnia — Conor Brady kept sending me away — then I became Ireland correspondent for The London Times,

The danger with books like this is that the grand political themes can end up stifling the human element or sapping the life out of the characters. Thankfully, for the most part, Audrey Magee does a wonderful job of conveying her characters with empathy and authenticity. The nagging cynicism I felt at first (that this was going to be a giant piece of pontificating Booker-prize-bait) eventually faded away. Audrey Magee is an Irish novelist and journalist. Her debut novel, The Undertaking, was nominated for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction in 2014. [1] [2] [3] [4] Her novel The Colony was longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize. [5] Biography [ edit ]I could see why the author chose that painting since the title sums up the dilemmas of the island community in 1979 when it was becoming more difficult to live completely cut off from progress as their ancestors had done—and as the Tahitians in Gauguin's painting of their paradise island life were trying to do. in the story itself, where one character's perspective is not shared by another's, over, and over, and over again. The Colony is brimming with ideas about identity and soul; a canny, challenging, and never less than engrossing read.” Writing in term time — and gorging on other people’s work during the school holidays, Magee has been writing The Colony since 2015.

Islands, in fiction, are always metaphors – and, as a rule of thumb, the smaller the island, the bigger the metaphor. The Colony’s nameless Irish island stands, as the title perhaps too pointedly suggests, for all colonies, and Lloyd for all colonisers. He sees with the colonist’s eye. The island cliffs are, he says, more “rugged” and “wild” than those in England: a fanciful notion, fraught with dubious politics. Lloyd is fiercely territorial about his temporary home. When another outsider arrives, he is indignant. His fellow visitor also carries colonial baggage: he is Jean-Pierre Masson, a Frenchman of Algerian descent. Masson is popular with the islanders. For one thing, he speaks Irish, being a linguist who specialises in “languages threatened with extinction”. But Masson, too, sees with politicised eyes. His Algerian mother was married to a French soldier who abused her horribly. Masson finds in the island’s Irish speakers an authenticity, a naturalness, that might bring him closer to his mother’s damaged world. ‘Imagine that,’ one of the islanders remarks. ‘A Frenchman and an Englishman squabbling over our turf’ By the novel's halfway point, Magee channels the characters' inner lives through extended soliloquies, expressing all of the desires they can't bring themselves to speak out loud. The only flaw is the novel's oblique and muffled conclusion, when the narrative tension mysteriously dissipates, but I was thoroughly transfixed by this novel until the very end. Very highly recommended.Mairéad, who finds herself the object of the competing attentions of Lloyd, who wants to paint her, Masson, who wants and does get to sleep with her on his annual visits, and her terrorist sympathising nationalist brother in-law; Brexit happened during the writing process, and Magee mirrors the trauma of this in Mr Lloyd’s subsequent behaviour to his talented protegee. The Colony is a glorious read; hugely impressive, immersive, and thought provoking, it’s filled with fascinating debate, and no little humour. I understand this is a novel about colonialism, language, art and sectarian violence. But my memories of it were mostly about James bringing people an inordinate amount of tea and me waiting for some moment of, well, excitement? A cliffside tumble, a fist fight, the willful destruction of one of these damn paintings... spoiler alert: none of this occurs. Covid came at an ideal time. “When it happened, I was at a point where I desperately needed more time. It was traumatic for the kids, but for me, as a writer, it was a time to finish and ferment the novel — a great time, because you were able to retreat from the world even further.”

So brilliant in its quiet tragedy, so revealing in its precision, it haunts me.' Tsitsi Dangarembga I put off reading this novel for a long time, and I was yet again rewarded after deciding to read it or rather listen to it. The language. Poland was non-existent as a country for 123 years and preserving the language and culture was seen of the utmost importance by both the elites and ordinary people. It was a non-violent tool against the legal systems of Russia, Prussia and Austro-Hungary, the latter one being least oppresive regarding the Polish language. Having the history in mind, I was related to this theme strongly. The hatred. Opposing any religious intolerance which leads to killing your brother, the newspaper-style chapters on brutal murders of Catholics and Protestants left me saddened and helpless. a b O'Loughlin, Vanessa (13 February 2014). "The Undertaking: Eleanor Fitzsimons Talks to Audrey Magee". Writing.ie . Retrieved 22 April 2016.

Had to mull my rating and what I felt about this book overnight - it IS thought-provoking and very well written - and yet I wasn't ENTIRELY satisfied; although of the six 2022 Booker nominees I have read thus far, it is clearly the standout (which actually says more about the dearth of anything amazing in this year's list, rather than the virtues of this entry). despite there being no metric sense or rhythm. And alternate chapters of news items about the daily killings of the 'Troubles' which, gradually and minimally, intersect with the tiny island family.