Lloyd’s thoughts start fragmentary both reflecting his uncertainty around his status on the Island and his examination of everything he sees as a potential (and often actual) subject for his continuing sketching, but gaining in confidence over time as he starts to assimilate James’s advice and ideas. Of course ‘the colongy’ is about colonisation - from the influence of the english language, to James not wanting to be a fisherman and wanting to change his life. Meanwhile, the islanders go about their business, continuing to speak their language with each other, while being willing to use English where it benefits them. This is certainly not a new idea (see Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth from 1961), but Magee explores it quite beautifully in the Irish context.

He is fiercely protective of their isolation, deems it essential to exploring his theories of language preservation and identity. This works as both historical fiction and as an exploration of an enduringly thorny topic, and I loved the whole thing. Interleaved with scenes of Lloyd failing to charm the islanders are terse chapters recounting Northern Irish atrocities. I've always believed that good fiction can go to the beating heart of human reality in ways more likely to resonate with a reader than any textbook. And it would be wrong to say the book rises to a climax: in true Irish tradition, the story shrinks back to its status quo ante.Magee’s prose is always luminous, lyrical and pungent: sometimes sliding into vertical columns of one-word paragraphs, sometimes dwelling on the minutiae of rabbit gutting or the smell of Prussian blue, and yet always remaining ever so slightly distanced. Naturally, there’s also an equally traditional smattering of merciless killing and colonising foreigners.

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Occasionally, the lack of quotation marks and the drifting into other characters minds/viewpoints within the same sentences/paragraphs threw me and I found that jarring as well.As the name suggests, the author tries to show the damage of Colonialism by choosing the small island as a symbol. In one telling moment, Mairéad and her brother-in-law Francis discuss the Mountbatten assassination in which two teenage boys were also killed. The Colony’ by Audrey Magee is set on an Island just off Irelands Atlantic coast, where the population has dwindled to double figures. Audrey Magee worked for twelve years as a journalist and has written for, among others, The Times, The Irish Times, the Observer and Guardian. The novel is set on a small speck of land, it has a limited cast of characters, and most action is developed out of conversations and descriptions of language and paintings, so cultural products.