Michael Magee’s Close to Home first caught my eye on Twitter, partly thanks to that quietly striking cover, partly lots of people whose opinions I trust impressed by it. Drawing on his own experience, Magee’s debut 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.
They were the people I looked up to when I was a kid. They were who I would be. The mad bastards, the ones everybody knew and talked about when we stood at the shops.
Sean wakes up the morning after yet another spree with his flatmate Ryan, inspecting his knuckles to see what the damage is. 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. His mum’s not in good shape, mental or physical, and his half-brother Anthony is given to binges which put Sean and Ryan’s in the shade. When Daniel Jackson presses charges, Sean finds himself in court, his degree saving him from prison but not a tongue-lashing from the judge who sentences him to community service plus a whopping fine. Things go from bad to worse as Sean loses his job at the nightclub where he and Ryan work, the flat is about to be repossessed and he’s forced to move in with his mother. When he bumps into Mairéad, trouble at school and an ex-girlfriend, he’s struck by her determination to make a life for herself.
She was a vegan. At least, she ordered a vegan meal, and I didn’t know why anybody would do that to themselves if they weren’t.
Magee’s novel follows a pleasing 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 out his life but temptation is constant, jobs are few and the future looks hopeless then Mairéad shows him the possibility of something different. 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. You’re never far away from someone who knows what your parents did back then and the street you lived on as a child is still a signifier. Bleak at times, it’s a novel which offers hope as Sean finds his way to the possibility of a future. It’s also a reminder to those of us who live on the mainland that despite the huge achievement of the Good Friday Agreement there’s still quite some way to go.
Hamish Hamilton: London 9780241582978 304 pages Hardback (Read via NetGalley)
This one does intrigue me since it deals with a journey to get back on track and the struggles along the way, and of course, a thread of hope among all the bleakness is always encouraging.
I’ve since read that Magee drew on his own experience when writing the novel which makes it all the more hopeful.
The redemptive and humor aspects draw me toward the book. So, too, your comment above that the author writes from his own experience. It’s a great review.
Thank you. Magee uses humour to lighten the tone but the generational trauma of the Troubles is brought home, particularly so with that knowledge of his own experience.
This sounds excellent. I remember it caught my eye in one of your preview posts too. Agree about the cover!
It’s such an impressive debut. Feels written from the heart.
Irish fiction is always a draw for me so that’s another one to add to my wish list.
Excellent! Certainly throws a light on Belfast, post Good Friday Agreement, particularly as Magee drew on his own experience, apparently.
As an Irish reader, I really liked this debut novel from Michael Magee. He is very talented and I heard him speak about growing up in Northern Ireland at an Irish literary festival recently. Another similar writer is the engaging NI writer Jan Carson. I would also recommend the highly talented Colin Barrett whose recent excellent novel Wild Houses covers similar terrain as Magee….Young adult disaffection, drug addiction, and redemption. Tough topics but its a lot of young peoples ‘lived experience’.
I thought the Magee was excellent. Pleased to see that it’s had such positive attention. Keen to read Wild Houses although I’ve a copy of Homesickness waiting to be read, and I enjoyed The Raptures a couple of years back. So many talanted Irish women writers: Louise Kennedy, Sheila Armstrong, Niamh Mulvey, Sara Baume, Rachel O’Donoghue to name but a few.
And Claire Sweeney, Lucy Caldwell, Claire Kilroy, Megan Nolan, Anne Enright. The list goes on, and not enough time to read them all