The Colony: Audrey Magee

Product Information

Mr Lloyd is a middle-aged traditionalist landscape artist — desperate to make himself relevant in the modernist London art scene alongside Auerbach, Bacon, and Freud — and he has The island is supposedly inhabited by 92 individuals, yet we only really get to know 6 of them, all from the same family - I found this insularity disconcerting; surely with all those cliff walks our main characters would encounter SOMEONE else in an island 3 miles by 1 mile in four months (others are vaguely alluded to only when the curraches are carried in from the sea). A rare outpost of Irish language speakers is visited by an English Landscape artist who is keen to capture the.

You might think that there's not much more to be said about post-colonial relationships, rural isolation and the legacy of Catholic Church autocracy in Ireland - and even less interesting to say about it! Thanks so much, Sue, for linking to my post, and I’m really glad to see just how much you got out of reading this novel with your book group. Perhaps this is why, in spite of its minor flaws and oddities, it makes an ultimately satisfying shape in the mind, and creates a mood that lingers discomfitingly after the final page is turned. And there’s the shifting of perspectives, sometimes within paragraphs, which brought to mind Damon Galgut’s The promise ( my review).It also had an almost cinematic quality I found appealing - I liked the dialogue heavy scenes the best; if it weren't for the interior monologues, this might make for an intriguing film. As the title indicates, Magee situates the Troubles within the framework of colonialism and post-colonialism.

The locals are alternatively bemused by and resentful of two outsiders, who embody two different variants of colonialist objectification and the imperial gaze.Lloyd has come to the island as a Gauguin only to discover that one of the Tahitians is already the finer artist. And these outer garments are merely the reflection of a hidden life, teeming and perpetually in motion. Overall highly recommended – and a book which lingers in the mind and in which my review covers only a fraction of the ideas and involved (for example the extensive discussion of art) or the novels strengths (for example the brilliantly wry dialogue of the islanders to and about Lloyd and later JP). She was Ireland Correspondent of The Times for six years, and wrote extensively about the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the subsequent peace process and the chaos caused by the Omagh bomb. Beyond these narrative pleasures and deft character studies, it's also a subtle allegory of the deep cultural scars left by British colonialism, and the illusory binary of tradition and modernity.

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange. Magee tracks her two unlikable protagonists as they ransack the island for their own ends, each believing that they have its best interests at heart. Her descriptions of a beautiful stretch of land within a beautiful but treacherous ocean are as dazzling as the sun-speckled glints on the ocean itself. His fellow visitor also carries colonial baggage: he is Jean-Pierre Masson, a Frenchman of Algerian descent.The little island colony, to which they come, functions then as a perfect microcosm of the colonised. The occasional broken lines of stream-of-consciousness are quite effective, and Magee obviously has a great affection for the history and culture of the book’s setting. Hearing people through history have changed sign language in the States through laws and policies, and some Deaf people feel English is superior, or that hearing is superior. I'd be extremely surprised if this didn't make the 2022 Booker longlist, and maybe even the shortlist.

He promises, for example, to respect the islanders’ wishes that he not paint them, but this doesn’t last. Both will strive to encapsulate the truth of this place – one in his paintings, the other by capturing its speech, the language he hopes to preserve.

In between chapters, like a radio bulletin, appear the murders that take place during this time in the north of Ireland. Language, art, violence, cultural differences and (naturally) colonisation – the way Magee weaves them together feels so masterful.