Book Review
The Colony (2022)
by Audrey Magee
The Colony, the second novel by Irish author Audrey Magee was longlisted for the Booker Prize this year. Like a great many of the Booker longlist nominees every year, I had never heard of Magee, so I was happy to check out The Colony, about an English painter who travels to an isolated island off the coast of the Irish Republic during the time of the Troubles in Northern Ireland (1979, specifically).
The main characters are the English painter, his would-be protégé, a young man who dreams of escaping said isolated island and a French linguist who is making his final trip before publishing his thesis about the survival of the Gaelic language in this isolated place. The chapters advancing the plot are interspersed with factual descriptions of what I believe were real atrocities committed against civilians in Northern Ireland during the troubles- by both side- that typically involved civilians either being caught in the cross fire or murdered for suspicion of collaboration with the wrong side. Whether the two streams will intersect provides one point of tension within the narrative, the other the conflict being the English painter and the French linguist- the former representing the "new" way- tourism for English speaking guests and the later trying to preserve the Gaelic language.
The Colony is a classic Booker longlist situation: Several types of tension developed in a single narrative, with a resolution that is satisfying but not obvious.
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