Close to Home

Michael Magee’s debut, Close to Home follows Sean from his squalid Belfast flat the night after a bender has seen him assault a guy at a party he’s gate-crashed, through his two hundred-hour-community service sentence.

Sean wakes up the morning after yet another spree with his flatmate Ryan. He and Ryan have known each other since they were children in working-class Twinbrook but while Ryan has stayed put, Sean left for three years at university in Liverpool, which is what saves him from prison. Things go from bad to worse as Sean loses his job, the flat is about to be repossessed and he’s forced to move in with his mother.

Magee’s novel follows a redemptive narrative arc as Sean tells us his story with deadpan humour beginning with the assault the details of which he can barely remember or admit to himself. He knows he needs to sort himself out but temptation is constant, jobs are few and the future looks hopeless. Always in the background is the legacy of the Troubles either in the form of murals on his grandma’s estate or in the damage done to those who went through it which has trickled down through generations. Bleak at times, it’s a novel which offers hope as Sean finds his way to the possibility of a future.

This is a Belfast novel more specifically a west Belfast novel, and it’s clear the author knows the place intimately. It’s about Sean, who comes home from uni with an english lit degree to find there are no jobs. At all. His older brother Anthony goes on benders constantly & tries to rope him in all the time.

One night Sean punches a bloke at a party & faces an assault charge and it threatens to completely derail his life.

I loved this so much, it's such an intimate look at what it's like to be a young working class man trying to make a life in the shadow of the troubles. You can't help but root for Sean even when he's making questionable decisions.

Thanks to NetGalley and Hamish Hamilton for the opportunity to review this book!

This was an incredibly emotional debut novel. It was devastating in parts through the characters representation of trauma (both familial and through the legacy of The Troubles) as well as the never-ending cycle of poverty and lack of opportunities – trying to escape this fate whilst clinging on to that small element of hope for a brighter future. The writing felt so real and filled with typical dark Belfast humour, with characters dealing with life in the best way that they could, even when it seemed like there was no hope for better days ahead.
I couldn’t put this book down and had it finished within the day. It will be hard to find a better book for me this year and I am excited to read more from this author. Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this proof.

This is a very special debut from Michael Magee. Set in Belfast, we follow Sean as he's returned home from Liverpool and gets in a fight that leads him to do community service. But more than that, we see someone who's been dealt a tricky hand making a life for themselves. Sean frustrated me and yet I kept rooting for him.

There's so much emotion in this book. So much care for people regardless of their flaws. I couldn't put it down, really fell in love with this.

Sean Maguire born an reared in Belfast. He’s brought up in the aftermath of the troubles. Still an undertone of the violence and segregation that went on and is probably still going on to an extent.

This story although a work of fiction could be deciphered as real life experiences of someone in their early twenties. Sean is from a single parent household. His Da vanished a long time ago. His poor Ma struggled, scrimped and worked two jobs to provides for her three sons. She tried to keep her son Anto out of trouble and from getting mixed up with any republican gangs.

Except you can’t say boo to Anto, so better to stay quiet and be a bystander to his antics.

In the wake of the recession, jobs have vanished and prospects have gone down the toilet. Sean returns to Belfast from University in Liverpool. He was supposed to be the successful one, the one that broke the cycle. Yet here he is back in his old habits, hanging around with the same old mates.

This book in my opinion is a work of art. It depicts the life they are living so well and so vividly. I enjoyed the narrators voice and his sense of being lead by the crowd but also knowing he should be doing better.

Sean comes across as a very unassuming type. I feel like circumstance has lead to his life choices so far.

I particularly enjoyed picking out places in Belfast I’ve been before. The Asda on Kennedy Way for example which we’ve been to many times!

This is a must read, a ‘real life’ picture of modern (2010ish?) Belfast for those living on the bread line.

A stunning debut

Loved this book following Sean, a young Catholic in Belfast in the early 2010s. In and out of trouble, losing his way and not able to take any benefit from his degree in English lit.
Against a backdrop of poverty, drugs and violence we follow Sean and his friends, following his assault of a stranger at a party. It’s a powerful study of masculinity, of broken families, of republicanism, of sexuality, and of art and literature. There’s a real heart to the writing, elevating it above misery literature.

Some similarities with Douglas Stuart, but very much worthy of standing alone.