Adina (notifications back, log out, clear cache) 's Reviews > The Colony

Longlisted for Booker Prize 2022

I read two longlisted books written by an Irish author back to back, which was accidental but also welcomed. If the Colony is set in 1979 during the Troubles, the other one, Small Things Like These, is set in 1985 and deals with the hardship of being a woman. The two novels are different in subject but I still see the Church playing a central role in both historical accounts.

In the summer of ’79 two men visit a remote island in the Irish sea. The 1st one, Mr. Lloyd, is an English painter who saw the island’s cliffs in a magazine and is searching for his best works on its shores. The 2nd, Jean-Pierre Masson, a Frenchman returns to the island to finish his book about the Irish Language and its preservation in that remote place. Both men want to work in solitude and without the other’s influence and presence. As it happens, the conflict between the two will affect more the family who hosts them than the visitors.

As the name suggests, the author tries to show the damage of Colonialism by choosing the small island as a symbol. Both strangers want something of the island and are doing what they need to obtain it, without thinking about the consequences or what they leave behind. The novel moves smoothly from one point of view to the next, we see what the visitors and the islanders think, how their ideas and hopes contrast with the other. In addition, the author inserts reportages about some of the murders which occur on the continent between the Protestants and the Catholics. I thought the construction and the idea were excellent and it deserved to be on the longlist. However…
Most of my friends loved this novel and their average rating is 4.70 out of 33 rating. I was very surprised to realise that I did not love it, as I was expecting. I admire its structure and writing but I was not awed. I do not understand why exactly. I know I was a bit bored by the repetitive plot. How many times can one drink tea or skin a rabbit? Also, I felt as a dispassionate viewer of the events, I could not feel part of the story.

I listened to the audiobook masterfully narrated by Stephen Hogan and I did not encounters the punctuation and paragraphing issues some others discussed.