The Colony: Audrey Magee

Product Information

An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored. Mairéad too becomes interested in art and eventually becomes Lloyd's muse, fraternizing with him in a way that disturbs those Islanders who are fanatically anti-British. She becomes Eve, suffering ever after for wanting to taste the apple of knowledge.

Lloyd sighed. He closed his eyes and lifted his face to the sun, surprised by its warmth when he had expected only northern cold, northern rain. He absorbed the heat for some minutes, and opened his eyes again. The boatman was standing as he had been, looking towards land, his body shifting with the rhythm of the water that lapped gently against the pier wall. and the contrast to the Proustian recollections of his colonial rival Masson, a Frenchman, determined to save the islanders' language and their heritage, even if that isn't what they want, and hiding a secret of his own (that he betrayed his own linguistic and cultural heritage); The Colony is based on a tiny Irish Island where Irish is still, almost exclusively, spoken. It’s the summer of 1969, and an English artist, Mr Lloyd, is setting out there to spend the summer in splendid isolation, in the hope of finding renewed artistic inspiration. He’s dismayed when, just days later, Masson, a French linguist arrives on his annual visit, writing on the preservation of the Irish language. The two men clash — and, literally, fight over the turf. Mairéad’s is still haunted by the loss of her husband and her desire to make her own life choices within the duties and responsibilities placed on her by others, not least the Francis.It is a metaphor, yes; a metaphor for the island of Ireland, of course, but also a metaphorical distillation of the experiences of all countries colonised since the 15th century by Britain or other European nations. His widowed mother – by day secretly life-modelling for Lloyd and by night secretly slipping into JP’s bed – warns that London won’t be easy for him: the Troubles have just claimed Mountbatten. In fact, the book is punctuated by brief, fact-cool reportage of sectarian and terrorist killings – committed by all sides – which begin as choral intrusions between chapters but in time seep into the islanders’ own conversation. In 1979 an English artist seeks to re-invigorate his painting (and his life overall) by visiting an island off the Atlantic coast of Ireland where life is still firmly rooted in the past, but where the reality of the world on the mainland encroaches in fits and starts. Residents, particularly the young, face the question of whether to stay or leave. That has to be The Bone People by Keri Hulme. It would not have come my way had it not been for the Booker, and I am very grateful to have had it in my life. At an early age, I learnt from Hulme that novels are a space for tough questions.

despite there being no metric sense or rhythm. And alternate chapters of news items about the daily killings of the 'Troubles' which, gradually and minimally, intersect with the tiny island family.As a student in Dublin, I worked in Waterstones. Booker time was an exciting time in the shop, tables piled high with nominated books. That my book is now longlisted and on those tables is beyond thrilling for me. It’s glorious. The significance of the isolated island to these visitors, the significance of the visitors to the islanders, and the interactions among them are interrupted with increasing frequency by news of The Troubles in Northern Ireland. Old and new, insiders and outsiders, human nature and politics; the uneasy tug of war among all these things. James’s voice is more formative and explorative – as he tries to absorb the interrelated possibilities both of art and of escape/a new identity.

a b c d "A Q&A with Audrey Magee about The Undertaking". Irishtimes.com. 13 February 2015 . Retrieved 20 April 2016. The Colony has been described as a metaphor for Ireland and a fable about the effects of colonialism. Did you set out to create such a metaphor? Does the book feel more topical due to the effects of Brexit?And watching as the men unload the fragile canvas currach and lift it out of the water to store it safe from the fierce waves. She wrote The Undertaking with the goal of trying to understand "what it was like to have been an ordinary German during the Second World War." [3] Magee took a "long time" to write the novel, as she "struggled with the novel's cruelty and indifference." [3] To cope, she took walks and drank tea. [3] A review of the novel in The New York Times said: "To write a story that doesn't allow for much sympathy, that keeps readers at a remove from the central characters, is one of the greatest challenges an author can undertake. That Magee succeeds as well as she does is impressive." [4] Art is everywhere in this book. You could say Art 'dominates' Mairéad and James—when they are not being dominated by other forces. One of the successes of The Colony is that it full of learning, from the Penal Laws, which contributed hugely to the decline of the Irish language, to the swift and brutal acceleration of violence by both sides in the Troubles. Magee skilfully layers these themes throughout the book. Both Lloyd and JP are high-minded about their respective endeavours on the island, their pursuit of authenticity, a word that is repeatedly used to excuse the various degrees of pillaging necessary to achieve it. Island life

Inspired . . . Magee strikes an expert balance of imagination and lucidity . . . [The Colony] proves that the path to understanding is a meaningful one. JP, initially confident of his welcome on the Island and in love with language, starts both fluent, wordy and heavily figurative – before over time moving into both a more academic and more suspicious register as the Islanders make it clear he is as guilty of appropriation as Lloyd. For a relatively short novel, The Colony offers several important themes such as the sense of national identity preserved in a language, hatred having its roots in history and religion or the need to cut off oneself from life lived previous generations. The island is now largely denuded of population – and his main interactions are with one three generational family: the matriarch Bean Uí Néill, her daughter Mairéad (whose father, husband and brother all died in one fishing accident) and her son James (Séamas) Gillan; Francis (Mairéad’s husband’s brother – a fisherman on the mainland but still very influential on the island - who wants to take his dead brother’s place in her bed) and Mícheál (a trader and boatman).

How long did the book take to write, and what does your writing process look like? Do you type or write in longhand? Are there multiple drafts or sudden bursts of activity? Is there a significant amount of research and plotting before you begin writing?