The Colony by Audrey Magee

 It is summer on a small island off the Irish coast.  Two outsiders come to spend the summer.  Mr. Lloyd is a landscape painter who has come to paint the cliffs and sea.  Jean-Pierre Masson is a Frenchman who is studying the native Irish language and has come to a place where it is still spoken with little English influence.  

Both rent a place to stay and get meals from a family who has lived there for decades.  The father and grandfather have been lost at sea, a tragic yet common end for those who fish for a living.  The household now consists of the grandmother, the recently widowed mother and a teenage boy, James.  James doesn't know what he wants except that he doesn't want his life to be one of becoming a fisherman.

As the summer progresses, the two men find they are at odds.  Violence is common on the mainland and news of various killings and bombings are interspersed with the narrative.  Mr. Lloyd changes his focus from landscapes to portraits of the widowed mother who is in her thirties and believes that he has done the best work in his life.   He encourages James to paint and tells him that he has talent and that the two of them can have an exhibit and that James can come with him at the end of summer and go to art school.  

Audrey Magee is an Irish author whose two novels have won much acclaim.  I listened to this book and the Irish accent of the narrator added so much to the book along with the English and French accents of the other characters.  Her choice to include frequent reports of the violence between Catholics and Protestants on the Irish mainland sets a surreal background to the betrayals happening on the island.  The ending of this novel is one that I'll long remember and her ability to transport the reader to a distant land and environment is to be envied.  This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.