A huge bestseller in Sweden, The Colony is a deeply an intimate and heartbreaking character study of what happens when strangers with a lot of emotional baggage find themselves together in an isolated self-sufficient community in rural Sweden. A strange book unlike any I’ve ever read before and I loved it.
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Review in one word: Connection
In The Colony, bestselling Swedish author and musician Annika Norlin crafts a haunting and strangely beautiful debut novel about how a group of misfits and outcasts come together and live off-grid in a strange commune in a remote Swedish forest.
The individual stories of how they arrive at the commune are deeply compelling and their reasons for feeling lost are instantly and universally recognisable.
The novel is written in a psychologically compelling way that delves into the motivations, pain and drives of each of the characters and makes you feel a tug of empathy for them as they navigate immense confusion and upheavals of life.
The ragtag group comes together under the wing of the charismatic and slightly megalomaniacal leader Sara who commands rather than gains consensus with others in the group. Sara’s partner József, is a sad man who lacks in confidence. We find out that his sadness comes from being the orphaned child of Holocaust survivors. And so he seeks the warmth of Sara.
She [Sara] had that giggle. It was the kind of giggle that put people in a good mood; it was boisterous. What is it about some laughs? They cut through everything: age, class, gender, generation, mood.
That kind of giggle is an equaliser. It’s irresistible. No one talks about the currency of a really good giggle.
Excerpt from The Colony by Annika Norlin
Aagny is an older woman with a chequered past of killing her partner. Zakaria is a handsome bouncer who is on the run from police. Sagne is a scientist and has her son Låke following a violent sexual assault with a random stranger. All of these people for some reason or another are unable or unwilling to function in the real world and so are drawn into this microcosm of a community in rural Sweden.
Everyone has a clear role: workers, soldiers, drones, and queens. The workers and soldiers are females, said Sagne.
And the queen mates with the drones.
Everyone has a task for the community, said Sagne.
Everyone is needed.
No one has to know everything
Excerpt from The Colony by Annika Norlin
Over months and years, a culture entrenches itself in the small group based on a natural cosmology and oneness with the forest and seasons. Over time, the stark differences in their roles and personalities come into sharp relief. How they interact with one another in this isolated and limited world becomes eerie and highly unusual and yet still remains strangely human.
Sex can be as many things as a conversation. A game. A bandage. A shrug. A party. Yoga? Violence. Something purely physical, almost like exercise. Bragging. People seeing each other. One seeing the other. If you are lucky: a bond.
All of this is good enough. But sometimes it happens: that a person is lucky enough to sleep with someone who loves her, and whom she loves in return. When the person you love is both secure and wide open, and you are, too.
Like a football game where everything works. All the balls you kick are received. You find the other player instinctively, by being both observant and present but also completely disconnected from your mind, utterly immersed in the flow.
You are simultaneously yourself and fully capable of being someone else. You become spiritual. One with the Earth. You are an instrument. Played upon. You swim. Streaks of light in the air. You undress in front of a person and stand there before them and dare to be, and the other does the same.
Excerpt from The Colony by Annika Norlin
The way the book is written with layered and slowly revealed plot twists is compelling and I honestly read it very quickly and thoroughly enjoyed the characters and their interactions. I would highly recommend this book!
Content Catnip 