The Colony, by Audrey Magee

A quietly powerful book about the residents on a tiny rural Irish island in 1979 where two foreigners come to stay over the summer (an Englis painter and a French linguist). Both men arrive and have very different and conflicting views about the islanders, but are both ultimately there to work on their own projects, and don’t neccessarily have the islander’s best interests in mind.

The majority of the book is set on the island, but there are short alternating chapters depicting the horrific violence and loss all over Ireland, happening at the same time. They are written in a very bleak, understated way and they are incredibly moving and shocking.

The book (as the title suggests) is about imperialism and colonialism, and it is one that left me feeling so frustrated and disgusted with some of the characters and what they represented.

It’s written in the third person past tense POV, but we get some really interesting & detailed monologue-style insights into many of the character’s feelings and thoughts, which I really liked. They all seemed like very complex and convincing real-feeling characters.

Accessibility

I didn’t find this book super easy to follow at first - but once I tuned into the writing style and got invested in the plot I was very hooked. I listened to it as an audiobook and I am really glad that I did, because I’ve seen that the book has no speech marks and I sometimes struggle with this. It also seems to be written in a very lyrical, poetic way.

The Colony aesthetic - all photos from Unsplash