However, I have used others under Creative Commons (and similar licences) when the owners have indicated on their sites/pages that they release their material under such licences. A good novel strengthens empathy as well as the imagination and encourages us to see another world from a perspective that travels beyond our own interests. A novel about language (among many other things) must have language as its master and Magee makes her own mastery look effortless. Lloyd’s part-estranged wife is a successful modern art dealer and exhibitor who has derided his traditional painting as derivative – when James starts to show some artistic promise (to his chagrin pointing out issues in Lloyd’s painting) he both uses Lloyd’s ideas to improve his own art and proposes the idea of a joint exhibition of their work in London (with the rabbit hunting James – who is desperate to avoid his inevitable fate as a fisherman on the Island – to accompany him and start at art school).

I acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the traditional custodians of the nation in which I live. This work by Whispering Gums is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.The Colony deals with the relationship between Ireland and England by focusing on an English artist coming to the Island to find himself. Lloyd nurtures the artistic ambitions of her teenaged son James, absorbing and exploiting his painted images, as the pupil quickly surpasses his master's achievements. 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. A novel set on a remote Irish island in 1979, and it couldn't be more timely: An English painter and a French linguist visit the island, both following their own agendas while also claiming that they are helping the poor, isolated community. Masson finds in the island’s Irish speakers an authenticity, a naturalness, that might bring him closer to his mother’s damaged world.

Interspersed between chapters on the events and interactions on the island are much briefer chapters (often just paragraphs) describing one of the many killings that happened on the mainland at that time, as part of The Troubles. Such an INTERESTING novel about imperialism, colonisation, language and art, beautifully written and oh my God, the West of Ireland dialogue. This word receives several meanings and shades in the novel, and the island with its inhabitants is the place which can be appreciated if not fully comprehended only by those who want to bond themselves with it. In that novel, emotions were bleached from the page, forcing the reader to dispassionately observe action and reaction, choice and choicelessness.

She gives Mairéad and James their her own version of being rescued from English dominance by the French.

Her first novel, The Undertaking, shortlisted for both the Women’s prize and the Irish book awards, impassively dissected the lives of ordinary Germans caught up in Hitler’s murderous determination to obliterate the Soviet Union. So yes, perhaps I'm too close to this book to see it clearly so I need to step back and change my perspective, view the bigger picture as it were. The 'Dark Rosaleen' poem I mentioned earlier was about Spanish ships coming to aid Rosaleen/Ireland in 1601 in the struggle against English dominance. The Colony is set during that Summer on a remote Gaelic speaking island when Earl Mountbatten and others were blown up and sectarian assassinations or attempts took place almost daily. Seeing Lloyd, he is shocked that the Englishman might corrupt the Irish speakers on the island with his colonial tongue, thus messing with his study.Audrey Magee's latest novel is set in 1979 on an unnamed island off Ireland's Atlantic coast where traditional life and language are receding to extinction. In 1798, French ships were also sent to help in the struggle, though only one ship landed in the end—at Killala on the Mayo coast. The sections of interior monologue often move from third person to first, as in that meditation of Mairéad's. Incidentally, the dialect of Irish spoken on James's island is from that coastal area so I feel the 1798 episode (fictionalised in 1979 by Thomas Flanagan as The Year of the French) must have been in Audrey Magee's mind as she was writing The Colony.