Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published May 2023
288 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Luminous and devastating, a portrait of modern masculinity as shaped by class, by trauma, and by silence, but also by the courage to love and to survive.
Sean's brother Anthony is a hard man. When they were kids their ma did her best to keep him out of trouble, but you can't say anything to Anto. Sean was supposed to be different. He was supposed to leave and never come back.
But Sean does come back. Arriving home after university, he finds Anthony's drinking is worse than ever. Meanwhile, the jobs in Belfast have vanished, 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 loses control and assaults a stranger at a party, and everything is tipped into chaos.
Close to Home witnesses the aftermath of that night as Sean attempts to make sense of who he has become, and to reckon with the relationships that have shaped him, for better and worse.
Drawing from his own experiences, Michael Magee examines the forces that keep young working-class men in harm's way, in a debut novel that shines with intelligence and humanity on every page. Close to Home is an extraordinary work of fiction about deciding what kind of a man you want to be and finding your place in the scarred city you call home.
Nero Book Awards, 2023
"Magee debuts with a consummate and searching bildungsroman of a young Belfast man trying to square his future with a painful heritage...Readers won't want this to end." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"An impressive coming-of-age tale enriched by its bleak setting." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"An exceptional debut destined for novel of the year shortlists."
—Irish Times
"A complex and compassionate portrait of modern Belfast by an impressive new talent."
—Times Literary Supplement (UK)
"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
"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
This information about Close to Home was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
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.
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