On a small, sparsely-populated and remote Irish island there is an ageing population that still speaks their native Irish language, but they are steadily dying out. One of the remaining youngest island residents is James who prefers to speak English and be addressed by his English name rather than his Irish name Seamus. Two foreigners separately travel to this island for their own purposes. There is irascible London artist Lloyd who wants to create paintings that capture the island's beauty and its inhabitants. He hopes to produce great works that will establish him as the “Gauguin of the North”. There's also Frenchman Jean-Pierre, a linguist who has been making excursions to the island for many years to record how the “purity” of this spoken language is slowly changing with the increasing influence of English. He wants to write an account of whether true Irishness can be preserved and Lloyd's presence is mucking up his plans. The two bicker and clash over their right to be on this island. The actual residents of the island grudgingly tolerate both of them as they are paying guests who bring in much needed capital as the native fishing industry has also been dying out – quite literally as both James' father and grandfather died at sea.

This is a slow burning drama that builds to say something much bigger about notions of national purity and colonialism. I admire how Magee approaches this on a very human level – as she did in a very different set of circumstances in her powerful debut novel “The Undertaking”. This new novel opens with a very funny scene where Lloyd insists on being ferried out to the island via an outmoded form of boat transport that's so rocky he's frequently sea sick. However, the heart of the novel is with the character of James who is caught between two worlds and whose opportunities are very narrow. He desperately wants to avoid following the family tradition of becoming a fisherman and finds a new passion in painting from his interactions with Lloyd. It's so moving how he develops an affinity for the spiky gentleman and what he can offer him as Lloyd suggests the boy's natural talent might go down well in the London art scene. Conversely, James is repulsed by the attention of Jean-Pierre who tries to get James to use his Irish name and preserve his native language. This all raises such strong questions about the meaning of national identity and who decides the fate of individuals and a distinct group of people.

Interspersed with the narrative about life on this island are short - almost journalistic - accounts of victims of The Troubles. These brief glimpses into lives that have been destroyed have the sobering effect of showing how ordinary individuals and families suffer while issues to do with Irishness and colonization are being more violently fought over. Even on the remote outpost of this island this longstanding war touches its citizens. Though Lloyd and Jean-Pierre believe their presence is benign or altruistic, they have a pernicious impact on James who finds himself left in as hopeless a position as before they arrived. The same is true for James' mother who (against the wishes of her family and the community) models for Lloyd and expresses her desire for a sense of permanence in Molly Bloom-esque soliloquies. The effect of this story is haunting. Its writing is so finely tuned with dialogue which fully brings to life these characters and their points of difference. Magee conjures a sense of tragedy that is very moving and impactful.

There’s an old cliché that relationships formed in times of emergency are tighter and more intense than those that come together in more natural circumstances. At least, they are at first. Audrey Magee’s debut novel “The Undertaking” begins with the marriage of German soldier Peter Faber and Katharina Spinell during WWII, but the couple aren’t physically together in the same place. In fact, they’ve never even met. Their marriage was negotiated through an agency for cold practical reasons. Peter wants leave from the battlefront to return to Germany. Encouraged by the parents she lives with, Katharina wants to receive a pension if Peter should die in combat. The two finally get to meet and, after some initial awkwardness, form an intense close bond. This hastily arranged relationship gives each of them something to hope for throughout the terrible war that ensues and it is incredibly brutal. At first the German forces and ordinary citizens smugly believe that their victory will continue and their empire will expand into the Russian territory they invade. The story follows the long bitter loss of this dream and cleverly portrays how the characters’ ideologies gradually shift with its withering.

The really striking feature of Magee’s strong writing is how incredibly spare it is. The novel is largely composed of dialogue. The conversations between characters are sharply distilled so that they evoke not only exactly what the characters are thinking, but the political ideologies behind what they are saying and the emotions thickly surrounding those words. The descriptions of location or events between these sections of dialogue are very sparse, simple and declarative because that’s all they need to be. It’s in the rich meaningful speech of the characters that the physical environment and entire culture at that time in history is evoked. This is a very clever writer’s trick and devastatingly effective for the subject of war. No poetics, interior contemplation or elaborate metaphors are necessary. The hard brutal facts and carefully chosen words spoken by the characters form a deeply felt, layered understanding of the personal dilemmas involved in life during battle.

At times I was on the brink of tears reading certain scenes in this novel because they are so blunt. A few terse lines in some scenes hit like a hammer. Characters celebrating moving into a richly decorated, spacious new apartment or the acquisition of a sparkling expensive jewelled necklace become something horrific because the reader knows that these have just been forcefully taken from Jewish people who have been rounded up by the Nazis. A temporary shelter with still smouldering fire and meagre meal for battered German soldiers in a tiny Russian village becomes revolting because the reader knows the helpless Russian civilians who just recently inhabited it have been forced out into the snow to freeze. These acquisitions taken by the characters seemingly without guilt don’t need any justification because it’s wartime. Normal moral impulses don’t apply. There is an enemy who is dominated and the spoils of war become the possessions of the victor. This steely merciless nature of battle comes through Magee’s story causing the reader to imagine the multitude of personal sufferings that are behind these physical takings. Scenes like this and ones where personal conflict actually occurs in a few short lines left me utterly devastated.

A German soldier being captured in Russia, Dec 1941

It’s fascinating how political beliefs and allegiances gradually shift throughout the novel - not because of the suffering the characters witness in others, but because of the gradual wearing down of their own minds, bodies and spirits. This isn’t a rose-tinted view of humanity. Magee shows how people act in a highly pressurized environment where desperation and necessity are the only things which motivate normal individuals. This isn’t a book about extraordinary heroes or viciously-minded villains. It’s about ordinary citizens involved in a war which we as historically-informed readers know they are doomed to lose. By dragging us through the battles both on the home front and fields of conflict, Peter and Katharina’s relationship which holds such a fiery aura throughout the novel is gradually, heart-wrenchingly demystified. I’m not going to say what happens or if the couple find each other, but what’s extraordinary is that the natural compulsion (for most readers, at least) to see a happy reunion is confounded by the way the society’s values shift over these wartime years.

I was having a conversation with someone recently about why Ireland produces so many distinctly strong writers. Recently I’ve been reading a lot of excellent new and established ones. Of course, any discussions like this inevitably fall into generalizations. Usually people cite the highly lyrical quality of Irish writing borne out of a long oral tradition and strong sense of culture. What’s striking about Audrey Magee is her writing doesn’t have any of this but is nevertheless intensely felt and still beautiful. I’m so happy that this book came to attention through its appearance on the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction long list as I might not have read it otherwise. It’s a gripping, terrifying and brilliantly conceived novel.

Here is a wonderful interview about Magee’s thought process in composing the novel and her motivation for writing it: