The Colony: Audrey Magee

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From Nobel Laureates Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter to theatre greats Tom Stoppard and Alan Bennett to rising stars Polly Stenham and Florian Zeller, Faber Drama presents the very best theatre has to offer. Another example of such a switch in point of view mid-sentence is this line about the smell of linseed oil: James inhaled deeply, soaking his lungs in this otherness that I could breathe all day, never come out. She gives Mairéad and James their her own version of being rescued from English dominance by the French.

In flashbacks, it's revealed that he himself is post-colonial: his mother was Algerian, married to a French soldier, and that the islanders' Gaelic is an analogue for the Arabic he never learned to speak. Seeing Lloyd, he is shocked that the Englishman might corrupt the Irish speakers on the island with his colonial tongue, thus messing with his study. James somehow escaped me then, his level of sophistication regarding life in general, and especially regarding everything related to art, far outstripping my own—though this West of Ireland girl has been learning scraps of art history and art technique throughout her life.RAVEN LEILANI'The Colony is brimming with ideas about identity and soul; a canny, challenging, and never less than engrossing read.

Lloyd wants to paint birds, seascapes, light; to “create them / as they already are” – a nice definition of what an artist does. The novel begins with an English artist – Mr Lloyd – travelling to a remote Irish Gaelic-speaking island off the West coast of Ireland where he intends to paint. Both JP and Lloyd, who look like they might (or, at least could) do good, are ultimately there for their own aggrandisement. Islands, in fiction, are always metaphors – and, as a rule of thumb, the smaller the island, the bigger the metaphor. 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.

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! 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.

in the story itself, where one character's perspective is not shared by another's, over, and over, and over again. The 'Dark Rosaleen' poem I mentioned earlier was about Spanish ships coming to aid Rosaleen/Ireland in 1601 in the struggle against English dominance. We also heard reports of women from the Nationalist community in Northern Ireland being punished by their own people because they'd been 'fraternising' with the enemy—the British soldiers who were then in occupation.As the title indicates, Magee situates the Troubles within the framework of colonialism and post-colonialism. Literary and highly readable, with vivid characters and a sophisticated exploration of its subject matter, The colony engaged us on all levels. For those who enjoyed The Colony I would recommend Peig: The Autobiography of Peig Sayers of the Great Blasket Island and The Aran Islands. The Colony tries to shake up its material through structural and linguistic devices: interwoven 1st and 3rd person narratives (courtesy of James Joyce?