The Colony: Audrey Magee

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Such an INTERESTING novel about imperialism, colonisation, language and art, beautifully written and oh my God, the West of Ireland dialogue. But the Frenchman is not content to simply record changes in language use, he also tries to force Mairéad and James to renounce English completely, though they are increasingly drawn towards English and the opportunities for a different life that it offers. Her first novel, The Undertaking, was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, for France's Festival du Premier Roman and for the Irish Book Awards. In one telling moment, Mairéad and her brother-in-law Francis discuss the Mountbatten assassination in which two teenage boys were also killed.

He wishes to attach himself to the people; but instead he only catches hold of their outer garments. Jean-Pierre Masson, a Parisian linguist, also arrives on the island for his fifth summer of fieldwork, seeking to preserve the authenticity of Gaelic from the encroaching influence of English, which Lloyd has thoughtlessly brought with him, contaminating his best-laid experiments. TSITSI DANGAREMBGA'A careful interrogation, The Colony expertly explores the mutability of language and art, the triumphs and failures inherent to the process of creation and preservation.The cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. Many thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Netgalley for sharing an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest and unbiased review. Lloyd, a middlingly-talented and middle-aged English landscape painter, arrives on the island as a figure of ridicule, seeking a truly authentic experience of windswept cliffs and pristine solitude.

James (or Seamus to JP) spends time with the English artist and finds out he has an aptitude for painting - which opens up new possibilities for him. These two visitors, aided by Micheál who is determined to make as much money as possible, stay close by in cottages near Mairead, her son James, her mother and grandmother. The Colony’s nameless Irish island stands, as the title perhaps too pointedly suggests, for all colonies, and Lloyd for all colonisers. A good novel strengthens empathy as well as the imagination and encourages us to see another world from a perspective that travels beyond our own interests. His widowed mother – by day secretly life-modelling for Lloyd and by night secretly slipping into JP’s bed – warns that London won’t be easy for him: the Troubles have just claimed Mountbatten.In his optimistic moments, he imagines making work that will get him talked about as the “Gauguin of the Northern Hemisphere,” doing for this rocky Atlantic outpost what the French primitivist once did for Tahiti.

for the sea took everything, beating him into fragments small enough to send across the earth on a journey of further erosion and rendering, pounding him into still smaller particles, atomised eternity granted unto him, oh lord, but nothing more, nothing for me to hold at night, to look at in the morning. This word receives several meanings and shades in the novel, and the island with its inhabitants is the place which can be appreciated if not fully comprehended only by those who want to bond themselves with it. Violence is a constant presence in the book, from the relentless news reports to young James’ brutal killing of rabbits for food. It’s a novel that both courts and refuses allegory, charting a disorienting course between a piercingly satirical realism on the one hand, and on the other, something much cruder – parable, perhaps, or fable. I'd be extremely surprised if this didn't make the 2022 Booker longlist, and maybe even the shortlist.Magee talks about colonialism, cultural identity and arrogant savior-types who don't listen to the people they state to help, and while the first half moves very slowly, the story picks up speed and becomes a real thriller, but crafted as a chamber play. With the Troubles at a boiling point on the mainland, the islanders host two summer visitors - one a painter from England, the other a linguist from France. The Colony is set during that Summer on a remote Gaelic speaking island when Earl Mountbatten and others were blown up and sectarian assassinations or attempts took place almost daily. And the frenchman JP masson, a linguist who is working on a study about how the Irish language has been decimated and the threats it faces, especially from the English. Whether the islanders want Lloyd there, what language they want to speak - that's of no importance to Masson, which doesn't mean that he isn't certain that he is doing the right thing.