The Colony

This book is amazing. Magee does all elements of the novel brilliantly: the vividly drawn setting on a small, gray, rainy and windy tradition-bound island off the west Ireland coast in 1979; characters that you can't not care about, whether you like them or hate them (and there are some nasty people here); a rich meld of the English and Irish languages; and a great story.

An English artist pays Irish boatmen to row him for hours in a currach to a stormy little island where most of the inhabitants still speak Irish. His plan is to spend the summer there painting. What he doesn't plan on is the French linguist also summering on the island while he documents the decline of the Irish language. The two men inevitably spar as they each in their own way romanticize the lives and history of the islanders. Interwoven throughout are vignettes of the people of all beliefs and backgrounds who are being killed because of the contemporaneous Troubles on the mainland.

This is about the colonization of countries by other countries, and about the exploitation of individuals in the colonization effort. It explores how nuanced and subtle the exploitation can be, particularly in our own times. Mr. Lloyd, the painter in the novel, fancies himself a 20th century Gauguin (remember, this takes place long before the world knew of Gauguin's marriages to his three teenage Tahitian "wives" and the probable chronic beating of his French actual wife) even down to manipulating a local Irish woman into modeling for him.

Most moving is 15 year old James, who, because of Mr. Lloyd, discovers his artistic aptitude; but is mislead by Lloyd, who struggles within his own tangle of insecurity and unfashionable art.