Close to Home: A Novel

by Michael Magee

Overview

“Michael Magee’s dead-on debut novel is universal.” —The New York Times Book Review

While growing up in West Belfast, Sean does everything he’s supposed to do. He works hard, he studies, and he—mostly—stays out of trouble. The thirty-year conflict is over, he’s told, and his future is lit with promise.

But when Sean returns home from university, he finds much of the same—the same friends doing the same gear in the same clubs; the same lost brothers and mad fathers; the same closed doors; the same silences. There are no jobs, Sean’s degree isn’t worth the paper it’s written on, and no one will give him the time of day. One night, he assaults a stranger at a party, and everything begins to come undone.

Michael Magee’s luminous debut, Close to Home, begins with this sudden act of violence and expands into a startling portrait of working-class Ireland under the long shadow of the Troubles. It’s a first novel drawn from life, written with the immediacy of thought. It’s about what happens when men get desperate, about the cycles of loss and trauma and secrecy that keep them trapped, and about the struggle to get free.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250335784
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	05/14/2024
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	449,135
Product dimensions:	5.38(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.65(d)

About the Author

Michael Magee was born and grew up in West Belfast. He is the fiction editor of The Tangerine, and his work has appeared in Winter Papers, The Stinging Fly, and The Lifeboat, and in The 32: An Anthology of Irish Working-Class Writing. He recently received his PhD in creative writing from Queen’s University, Belfast. Close to Home is his first novel.

Editorial Reviews

★ 03/27/2023

Magee debuts with a consummate and searching bildungsroman of a young Belfast man trying to square his future with a painful heritage. It’s 2013, and Sean has just earned an English degree in Liverpool, his departure from Belfast alone a feat among his old mates, who came of age with no prospects in the wake of the 2008 recession. Now he’s back home, squatting in a dodgy flat, stealing groceries to survive, and trying to hold down a nightclub job while getting blasted on cocaine and vodka with his friends. The sectarian violence of the Troubles is in the rearview, but the memories are ever-present. His mother, whom he moves back in with after the squat is repossessed, used to hide guns in their house when he was a little boy; and his estranged father narrowly avoided execution by the IRA. In a poignant series of revelations, Magee shows why Sean’s father was targeted, why he was saved, and why Sean doesn’t see him anymore. Along the way, Sean serves out a community service sentence for assault, another event that Sean gradually unpacks in his thoughtful narration. He also makes new friends from nearby Queen’s University, who offer glimmers of a different life. Magee demonstrates profound psychological acuity and a keen sense of place, showing how Belfast has shaped his characters and how the past is etched into the streets. His strongest achievement is in the sensitive portrait of Sean, who doesn’t want to lie to himself and eventually works up to the truth. Readers won’t want this to end. (May)

Publishers Weekly

Though the voice is decidedly Irish, the message of Michael Magee’s dead-on debut novel is universal. At its core, Close to Home is about finding a way to transcend the pain, the people and the place you’re born into . . . Magee’s yarn unspools like a story told over a couple of pints. The result is an intimate, dizzying onslaught that highlights the contrast between fear and joy, love and hate.”
—Eli Cranor, The New York Times Book Review

“Like [Sally] Rooney, Magee explores the world of a literary-minded 20-something navigating the distinctions of class in an affecting story of self-discovery. But his voice is wholly his own: unflinching, direct, disarmingly sensitive and informed by his own experiences . . . Suffusing his narrative with honesty and grace, Magee succeeds in bringing his neighborhood to life for readers and suggests that amid what seems like a never ending struggle, there is always room for hope.”
—Michael Patrick Brady, The Washington Post

“An exceptional debut destined for novel of the year shortlists.”
—Martin Doyle, Irish Times

“A complex and compassionate portrait of modern Belfast by an impressive new talent.”
—James Conor Paterson, The TLS

“A lyrical examination of masculinity, class, and poverty . . . [Magee’s prose] sings with the tenderness of a writer beyond his years.”
—Electric Literature (Most Anticipated)

“A consummate and searching bildungsroman of a young Belfast man trying to square his future with a painful heritage . . . Magee demonstrates profound psychological acuity and a keen sense of place, showing how Belfast has shaped his characters and how the past is etched into the streets . . . Readers won’t want this to end.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A poignant exploration of masculinity amid the latterday wreckage of the Troubles.”
—Anthony Cummins, The Guardian (Best New Novelists of 2023)

“[Close to Home] marr[ies] the thematic unsentimentality of the French author Edouard Louis with prose reminiscent of Irvine Welsh . . . A convincing, nuanced debut.”
—Luke Ward, Sunday Independent

“A young man in Northern Ireland sees little hope of escape from hard times in this persuasive debut . . . Magee’s is a dark tale but rather understated when compared with the extreme sorts of dead-enders found in Rob Doyle’s Here Are the Young Men (set in Dublin) and Gabriel Krauze’s Who They Was (in London) . . . An impressive coming-of-age tale.”
—Kirkus (starred review)

“The best debut I've read in years - a tender examination of class, masculinity and place.”
—Nicole Flattery, author of Show Them A Good Time

“Close To Home announces an exciting new voice - at once open and wary, tender and unyielding - and sharply alive to the pains and discoveries and mysteries of youth.”
—Colin Barrett, author of Homesickness

“Close to Home does for Belfast what Shuggie Bain did for Glasgow. Its portrayal of a particular kind of masculinity - self-destructive and romantic by turns - is unsparing, funny and desperately sad. Keep an eye on Michael Magee; he's the real deal.”
—Patrick Gale, author of A Place Called Winter

“A vision of a post-conflict Belfast that didn't deliver what it promised, blighted by poverty, pain and memory. But far from being bleak, I laughed out loud many times. And it is full of love. Each character is so vividly drawn that I felt like I had met them somewhere before; even the most flawed of them is treated with dignity and respect, and an absence of judgment that reminded me of Annie Ernaux. And the writing! Supple, rich and demotic - Kneecap meets Chekhov - no one else is doing this. I had great hopes for this novel and Michael Magee has booted it out of the park. Absolutely glorious.”
—Louise Kennedy, author of Trespasses

“Beautifully observed and sharp as a knife tip - as real and as raw as the truths you tell on a comedown, in the early hours, in the darkness of some stranger's house. Deeply affecting and badly needed, this is a novel I will be thinking about for a long time.”
—Lisa McInerney, author of The Glorious Heresies

“Wonderful. A debut overflowing with years of experience and carefully worked craft. By turns hard-edged and soft-hearted, this novel is a gift from Michael Magee to us all.”
—Jon McGregor, author of Reservoir 13

“Michael Magee's first novel is superb. An emotionally true, keenly observed book that goes deep into the troubled territory of home, family and friendship, returning with a message of love.”
—David Hayden, author of Darker with The Lights On

“As beautiful as it is brilliant. Reading Close to Home is like crossing a frontier into a new and thrilling territory.”
—Glenn Patterson, author of The International

“Ringing out clear and true as a bell, it gleams with tenderness and perception. There are few narrators so unassuming and unaffected, yet so full of sharp intelligence.”
—Wendy Erskine, author of Dance Move

“A sharp and humane novel about a young man, and a city, caught in the painful throes of reimagining themselves. It rings with authenticity, and the wisdom of hard-won observation and experience - a hymn to the ways in which art can be a lifeline and an escape. Michael Magee's debut is an important addition to the burgeoning new canon of Belfast literature.”
—Lucy Caldwell, author of These Days

From the Publisher

★ 2023-03-14
A young man in Northern Ireland sees little hope of escape from hard times in this persuasive debut.

Sean Maguire returns home to Belfast with a university degree in literature and no prospects. A recession has eroded the job market, and serving drinks in a nightclub doesn’t pay much. As his narrative opens, he’s 22, sharing a mold-ridden flat that’s soon to be repossessed, cheating the supermarket's self-checkout for free food, and drifting from one binge to another. A violent assault lands him in court, where 200 hours of community service and a hefty fine add to his woes. His family is haunted by his father’s sexual abuse of Sean’s older brother when he was a child. And 20 years after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, Sean’s contemporaries see few gains in the wake of the Troubles, with its legacy of trauma and bitterness. Magee’s is a dark tale but rather understated when compared with the extreme sorts of dead-enders found in Rob Doyle’s Here Are the Young Men (set in Dublin) and Gabriel Krauze’s Who They Was (in London). What’s especially plausible are the many snares that even an intelligent fellow like Sean falls into because of self-pity or laziness or that old reliable demon, peer pressure, thanks to enabling childhood buddies. Only a chance meeting with an old friend—one of the two strong female characters, along with Sean’s mother—suggests that a better life is within reach. Mairéad was “always getting into all sorts of trouble with the peelers” (police), but she went to university and crucially found a better life afterward with fellow graduates. As she says, “I made new friends.” That sounds simplistic, but the key is the inverse: She avoided the old friends, the old snares.

An impressive coming-of-age tale enriched by its bleak setting.

Kirkus Reviews