Salt, Wounds, and an Unrelenting Sea: The Colony by Audrey Magee

Written history is an approximation — an aggregation of individual histories smoothed over to dovetail into a grand narrative, losing much texture in the process. Fiction can be sensitive enough to pick up and amplify these individual stories. What often surprises the most is the fractal-like nature of these stories. Whether we scale up or scale down, the microcosm?macrocosm analogy seems inescapable. As are the transactions between persons, so are the transactions between empires. As is the ebb and flow of power in the past, so it will be in the future.

The Colony?is an exploration of colonialism at the near-microscopic level of one family along the near-transparent strata of language and art. The story takes place in 1979 on an unnamed island off the coast of Ireland. Two men visit the island for a summer — an English artist who hopes to find inspiration for his art in the rugged solitude of the island and a French linguist who believes the island to be the last place on earth where Irish Gaelic that is untainted by the influence of English is still spoken. Both become enmeshed, although in different ways, with a family on the island. Both have their own interests to serve despite the airs of altruism that they adopt. The Gillans, an island family with three generations of widowed women and a fifteen-year-old son in the fourth generation, represent different things to the two men, as the reader will come to see eventually.

Colonialism is characterized by two conflicting urges — the first is to ‘improve’ the colonized, while the second is to ‘preserve’ them as specimens of foreignness.

Colonialism is characterized by two conflicting urges — the first is to ‘improve’ the colonized, while the second is to ‘preserve’ them as specimens of foreignness. Lloyd, the painter who wants to paint the cliffs, looks at the island and the people with the eyes of a colonist. His attitude is one of entitlement for all that “we [the English] have done for them [the Irish]”. Mason, on the other hand, is critical of the English in general and Mr. Lloyd in particular. He is determined to cocoon the inhabitants of the island from all that the English “have done to them [the Irish]”. Meanwhile, it can be seen that the islanders — most of whom we do not meet except in passing — have evolved their own means to manipulate these urges to whatever advantage they can manage to forage in their rocky lives.

There is an unmistakable vein of satire that runs through the novel. The ridiculous patronizing attitude that Mr. Lloyd, the Englishman, adopts from time to time and the way Mason, the Frenchman, is taken for a veritable ride by the ‘pure Gaelic speakers’ on the island does provoke a smile, albeit a rather wary one because the reader cannot escape the politics that simmer just beneath the surface of the story.

The story unfolds against a background of violence deftly sketched in by short paragraphs on gory incidents. Initially, the contrast is striking — the island is untouched by violence, the inhabitants are apparently apolitical, and the drama is entirely domestic. However, as the story progresses, one senses a kind of parallel theatre where the macrocosm of the Troubles is visible in the microcosm of the island, leading up to a rapid convergence of the political and the personal.

The colonized in any country and culture are doomed to multiple lives animated by the call of their roots and the instinct to survive or thrive. As an Indian, it is easy for me to see how this wound is passed down through generations and how memories, aspirations, or the lack thereof become the proverbial rub of salt. While the visitors are preoccupied with their agendas, the islanders are caught in desires and dilemmas of their own. Mairead’s longing for a new land is subjugated to her decision to live a life of memories while James Gillan, her son, is pragmatic and ambitious.

the writing is among the most luminous that I have read in the recent past and succeeds in heightening the reader’s enjoyment of the story in a very sensual manner.

In her writing, Magee has used language that is evocative at multiple levels. The story is told through prose and verse that flow in and out of each other seamlessly. More attractive and unique are the long sentences in which each word crashes onto our consciousness like the unrelenting waves that crash onto the cliffs of the island. The words have a rhythm that is a combination of the sea and the liturgy. The untranslated Gaelic within the text helps the reader share in Lloyd’s bafflement. In short, the writing is among the most luminous that I have read in the recent past and succeeds in heightening the reader’s enjoyment of the story in a very sensual manner.

While it is unflinching in its critique of imperialism, Audrey Magee’s ‘The Colony’ remains a moving tribute to the human condition, to the colonized and the colonizer, and to the very will of existence.