The Colony, Audrey Magee, author; Stephen Hogan, narrator
There are two threads occurring side by side in this novel. The year is 1979. One theme occurs on a remote Irish island where a small colony of pure Irish folk, numbering around 22, live independently, as they always have, fishing and providing for their own sustenance. They have few to none of the creature comforts of modern life and have been unspoiled by the influence or control of England. Few dream of the benefits of wealth, and there is little greed or argument. They are unaware of much about life outside their island. They attend church weekly and work every day, just to survive. The men are fishermen, but there are fewer and fewer remaining on the island. The few with grander dreams, leave. Only a few still speak the pure Irish language. Most speak English too.
The other competing theme in the book occurs in the more modern Ireland that is prospering and also warring under the thumb of British control. Those opposed to colonial and religious prejudice are raging and protesting, sometimes violently. Catholics and Protestants are fighting each other. Those loyal to an independent Ireland are fighting those loyal to the crown. Cold-blooded murders are occurring daily.
Lloyd arrives on the island to paint. He is a classical artist who wishes to immerse himself in the past to truly experience life as it was and to paint like the classical artists did. Since his wife prefers modern art, in addition to the friction in the country, there is friction in his marriage between the past and modernity as well. He is hoping to improve his art and to possibly please her more. He uses a woman there, Mairéad Ni Ghiollian as his nude model. He paints her in the classical style, but his style changes due to influences on the island, not necessarily honorable. She represents the innocence of the past, he perhaps represents the deceitfulness of the present.
When a Frenchman arrives on the island, even more conflict arises. The Frenchman insists on keeping the island purely Irish, even down to speaking only Irish which Lloyd does not understand, even though they share space on the island which is only 3 miles long and a half mile wide. J.P. Masson, the Frenchman, is doing a paper on the past and its language there. Using a series of interviews collected over a period of several years, with an old grandmother, who is Lloyd’s model’s mother, Bean Ui Neill, who speaks a pure Irish, he will present his thesis on the dying Irish language.
Now enter the model’s son, James, who refuses to be called by his Irish name Seamus. The English version represents his dream of leaving the island and becoming more than a fisherman. He does not want to drown like his father, uncle and grandfather. He sees Lloyd as his way out. He wants to be trained as an artist. Although Lloyd refuses at first, he acquiesces because of the boys power of persuasion and his natural talent.
The naivete and patience of 15 year-old James Gillan, who is guided in his innocence, by common sense and not book learning, as he rejects the teachings of the church and needs of his family, in order to achieve his desires to not be condemned to the life of a fisherman, coupled with his trusting nature that has not been corrupted by the outside world, cannot compete with the deviousness of the adults, consumed by their own selfish desires, with Lloyd as his jealousy and desire for success consumes him, though he hides it well, with the Frenchman whose past has corrupted his ideas of life and is determined to live one way off the island and one way on it, with little regard for the starving residents. Both men want more under the guise of wanting to study and use the past which they believe is better suited to life, but they want to use it to improve their own future. James wants to move totally into the future, rejecting the past, but Lloyd’s jealousy of James’s natural talent makes him want to keep James in the past.
Although the secondary theme is the conflict in Ireland with the very moving naming of the dead, those murdered in Ireland’s fight for independence, as most of the dialogue occurs on the tiny island that is part of the past, because of the explicit violence, it dominated my thoughts as I read the book. Is change only achieved through violence? Is power really the source of the corruption or is it human nature desirous of more and more, of the competition to be better than, or is it the lack of camaraderie and the need for power over someone or something.
It felt like the novel moved back and forth between the simple thoughts of James and the canniness and arrogance of those that interrupted the island’s peace with their modern day needs to achieve more, for all the while they claimed to be seeking a kind of purity, they tainted the very places they occupied, taking advantage of those maintaining their hard, but peaceful lives, in order to improve their own lives back in the modern world. They had little or no regard for how their behavior affected those on the island. Their virtue was almost an expression of the antithesis of virtue. Is it human nature to betray each other as society advances? Would it be better if society did not move so far into the future and modernity, with all of its technological advances that make conflict so easily available and barbaric?
This is a short book, but it raises so many philosophical questions. The past and the present are in constant conflict with each other on the island and the mainland. Modernity and history are at war with each other. Even on this remote island, the Irish and English fight over the past and the French and the English air their fury with each other as well. Past resentments do not ever seem to die, past grief must be assuaged, reparations must occur in some way to salve the anger of those that continue to harbor their hate and resentment. Those that want retribution create turmoil, fear and violence, resulting in death and destruction, using their belief in their “right” to recompense and vengeance as their justification. One would be wise to look intensely into the world today, five decades later, to witness what is once again modernity and the pas in conflict. What has happened to the values that used to guide us? How much should we give up, how much should we hold onto, in order to achieve our versions of justice?
There is so much sadness, so much grief and loss displayed on these pages. Dealing with the separation that comes from death and from life, as when one moves on, are both difficult. In the story, tenderness and kindness are always pitched against greed and violence. Does the relationship between James and Lloyd, who ultimately betrays James, represent the real clash of modern life with the past. Although politics is forbidden from intruding on the island life, it enters the story front and center, in the end, once again showing the contradictions we live with, daily. Are we all both good and bad as we break and adjust rules to justify our needs? The island, so divorced from reality also experiences conflict as it becomes harder to maintain their lives on their own, as the men leave and the women are not strong enough, as fish is the main sustenance and some refuse to fish. Is it necessary to move along into the future in order to survive? The island is a microcosm of the real world as we all struggle to survive.
The simplistic dialogue, the bare sentences that are devoid of anything but statements of fact and the truth in that moment, are uncomplicated and unsophisticated, sharply contrasting with our lives today where nothing is as it seems and words have different meanings to different people. So this family and the island dynamics represent the very same things that are tearing the countries and the world apart. There is a universal power struggle taking place for a number of reasons. Some people dream of change and some people dream of maintaining the status quo. Some people want power and some simply want to live powerfully free. An interesting discussion would be about whether or not change corrupts life or the people create the corruption to bring about change. Yet in the end, it does seem that the more things change, the more they seem to remain the same.