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The Colony

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The Colony

By: Audrey Magee
Narrated by: Stephen Hogan
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About this listen

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.

'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

©2022 Audrey Magee (P)2022 Faber & Faber Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Sea Adventures Adventure Emotionally Gripping Heartfelt Inspiring Thought-Provoking Tear-jerking

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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)
All stars
Most relevant
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.

Surprisingly Good

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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.

Astonishing and transfixing

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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.*****

Riveting story

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I had read the book already but the audible version gives it another dimension and the narrator is amazing and bring the characters to life.

Well worth listening to

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I think this is a good book, the writing is evocative though the ending somewhat predictable.

For me it was a hard listen that I wanted to end but was compelled to finish,

The story is bleak and interrupted by dead pan descriptions of violence during 'the troubles' which reminded me all those dead and injured were real people.

I feel I ought to have learnt something, from this novel perhaps as a reward for all the grim. Maybe someone younger would be surprised, shocked and educated by the long, cruel history of England and Ireland but I'm old enough and Irish enough not to need a reminder.

Depressing

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