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The Colony cover art

The Colony

By: Audrey Magee
Narrated by: Stephen Hogan
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Summary

He handed the easel to the boatman, reaching down the pier wall towards the sea. Mr Lloyd has decided to travel to the island by boat without engine - the authentic experience. Unbeknownst to him, Mr Masson will also soon be arriving for the summer. 

Both will strive to encapsulate the truth of this place - one in his paintings, the other with his faithful rendition of its speech, the language he hopes to preserve.

But the people who live here on this rock - three miles wide and half-a-mile long - have their own views on what is being recorded, what is being taken and what is given in return. 

Over the summer each of the women and men in the household this French and Englishman join is forced to question what they value and what they desire. At the end of the summer, as the visitors head home, there will be a reckoning.

©2022 Audrey Magee (P)2022 Faber & Faber

Critic reviews

"The Colony is a vivid and memorable book about art, land and language, love and sex, youth and age. Big ideas tread lightly through Audrey Magee’s strong prose." (Sarah Moss)

"The Colony is brimming with ideas about identity and soul; a canny, challenging, and never less than engrossing read." (Lisa McInerney)

What listeners say about The Colony

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“Self Portrait: Review”

Stephen Hogan gives an outstanding, polyphonic performance - probably the best audiobook I’ve listened to. Aided by his native Irish, Hogan’s voice is well-endowed to capture every nuance of speech; every intonation, accent and inflection expressed with technical mastery and a coherent sense of character. Since there’s a Frenchman, an Englishman and a host of Irish characters (who never walk into a bar!); male, female and of various ages, including a matriline of widows whose declining mother tongue the author is interested in charting, the distinction of character Hogan delivers is crucial. As a result, we are potently drawn into the melancholic, lilting world of Magee’s novel, full of yearning, starved, but not hopeless, existences and untameable forces of nature: a neo-colonial allegory, set on a remote island against the backdrop of the Troubles whose fatalities intercut each chapter before gradually, poignantly bleeding into the diegetic action of the plot itself. It’s a real tour de force and a testament to the collaborative capacity of audiobooks: the synergy of art, author and actor.

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13 people found this helpful

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Surprisingly Good

It's about relationships between people and relationships between countries.
A French language PhD student and an English artist spend the summer with local people on a remote Irish island. The locals are in need of the revenue, but the visitors are in danger of destroying the old way of life that they have come to observe.
I got the feeling this was a deeper story than I was appreciating. Worth sticking with it, things come together in the last hour or so.
Long listed for the Booker Prize 2022. I'm not sure it will get as far as actually winning the Booker Prize, but it really is an excellent read.

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10 people found this helpful

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Well worth listening

Reviewer Callum has noted the outstanding job of narration / performance here by Stephen Hogan and I agree this is a terrific achievement.
Audrey Magee's novel has many passages of great beauty. Her dialogue is excellent, particularly how she conveys the oblique, wary speech of the islanders with its humour. The early scene of the English artist being rowed in a currach is beautifully done, the characters revealing themselves convincingly in their speech.
Unfortunately the writer abandons that credibility in a later scene where the oldest woman on the island becomes a mouthpiece for Magee's own ruminations on history and culture. She falls into the same trouble with the internal monologue of the fifteen year old boy who becomes astonishingly articulate on art and philosophy in a very short time.
Meanwhile we get a series of insertions recounting particular murders in the Northern Ireland troubles - these deserve to be remembered and are on record in excellent histories and journalistic works about the period. However I found their use in this novel jarred and felt increasingly banal as the stories accumulate - the opposite effect to what might be desired. I reckon her employment of the murder of Mountbatten and those who were with him on the boat in Sligo works well and would have been enough without the catalogue she keeps returning to.
However, I would not discourage anyone from listening to this audiobook. There is much to enjoy and admire about it. The outcome of the interaction between the 'colonist' artist and the young islander here is a subtly enough managed metaphor for the colonial relationship in history which carries the sour taste of truth.

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simply brilliant

The narration of this wonderful story was outstanding. This book is a work of art

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A Wonderfully lyrical Novel.


A beautiful meditation on colony and colonisation and mainly. but not exclusively the geopolitical Anglo-Irish iteration with a particular focus on language. 

I would recommend the audio version of this particular book as I think this book is probably best heard than read  if possible just let the words carry you across the Irish Sea. 

This is not an easy read but an important and poetic one.

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Astonishing and transfixing

This is a really outstanding listen, the narrator is also superb. It’s several stories interwoven together and is really a wonderful experience to listen to. It manages to blend some harsh and, at times shocking depictions of violence with the most wonderful painting of life on a small island.

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6 people found this helpful

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Excellent but with one critical flaw

This is an excellent book and one of the best readings of an audio book I have ever listened to. But there is one critical flaw: the pronunciation of the Irish language in places is just flat wrong. Given that the language is a central theme of the book (and one of the things that I loved most about it) this is a critical flaw in an otherwise excellent production. (Though will not be noticed by those unfamiliar with the language and will not detract from their experience.)

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5 people found this helpful

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Riveting story

This fascinating story was packed full of interesting history, artistic discovery and character study.
Read beautifully by Stephen Hogan, a master of voices.
I just wanted it to continue on and on.*****

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2 people found this helpful

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Excellent narration

I cannot rate the reader highly enough. An outstanding performance of a compelling and challenging story.

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Brilliant performances and excellent production

Stephen Hogan does an excellent job of capturing the vividly written characters and rendering the tension in their talk and interactions. Magee’s writing is full of crafted nuance and makes for a very engaging read. Would recommend, for both the story and the production values.

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