The Colony: Audrey Magee

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This is a quietly powerful novel that gently depicts the scar of colonialism on a small Irish Island. I plan to comment on your review properly now I’ve read it Jacqui when I can sit properly at my computer … am away at present and am writing this while a passenger in the car. 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). He wishes to attach himself to the people; but instead he only catches hold of their outer garments. Her second novel, The Colony, published in 2022, has already been optioned for film and is receiving stellar reviews around the world.

The underlying theme is the collision between an ancient way of life on a small Irish island and two "incomers," who have their own less than altruistic reasons for visiting the island over one summer in the 1970s. Both strangers want something of the island and are doing what they need to obtain it, without thinking about the consequences or what they leave behind.All of the atrocities happened in 1979 – the year, it is later confirmed in an aside, when the action of The Colony takes place.

Violence is a constant presence in the book, from the relentless news reports to young James’ brutal killing of rabbits for food. LISA MCINERNEY'The Colony is a brilliant and thoughtfully calibrated commentary about the nature and balance of power.The Colony deals with the relationship between Ireland and England by focusing on an English artist coming to the Island to find himself. Lloyd nurtures the artistic ambitions of her teenaged son James, absorbing and exploiting his painted images, as the pupil quickly surpasses his master's achievements.