Book Review - Close to Home by Michael Magee
I always enjoy the feeling when I’ve read the first couple of pages of a new book and think ‘Ah. So this is the book I’ve been waiting on’. It’s fair to say I enjoyed ‘Close to home’, the debut novel by Michael Magee, from very early on. Sometimes a book just resonates with you right away.
Belfast
It’s 2013 and 22 year old Sean has returned to Belfast from Liverpool, with an English literature degree. The only work he can find is as a bartender, and he is still partying with the same friends he had before he left. Nothing seems to have changed, and his family are still struggling with past traumas. He’s just about holding things together, until he gets into an altercation at a party, and things start to spiral out of control.
This is a book that captures drink and drug binges well - think Shuggie Bain, or Trainspotting. The Friday night that turns into a three day binge. The casualness of drugs in the toilets. And worst of all, the comedowns, how mentally and physically broken you feel until you survive a couple of days before entering the maelstrom once more. And repeat.
Men
It’s a while since I read a book that dealt so accurately with the problems facing young men in society. The men in this book are complicated, not cliched or one dimensional, and they struggle to find their way. There are a lack of father figures, and when they can’t express themselves emotionally, it leads to violence, to addiction, all of the problems society is familiar with.
I enjoyed the authenticity of the voices in the book, people I could recognise. (Another writer whose work chimes in the same way is fellow Belfast author, Wendy Erskine.) I also have to mention ‘Trespasses’ with it’s story set in the midst of the troubles, but it too has that grit and toughness that feels real. I think I read so much fiction that lacks an emotional heart that when I do encounter something genuine that it almost shocks me.
The Troubles
The troubles are over but the scars haven’t healed. I thought Magee depicted this so well, the stories and tears coming out after a few drinks, the trauma appearing again. It’s bubbling close by the whole time.
There’s not much in the way of plot here but it doesn’t matter. Watching Sean navigate his way through this landscape, dealing with the dire economic situation, family, trauma - I felt totally under his skin. It’s been a while since I related to a character as much as this - actually, again, probably Shuggie Bain.
Close to home
Close to home- he has come back but is he ever back? As Bob Dylan sang, you can come back, you just can’t come back all the way. And where is his home now? He finds it hard to carve a space for himself - maybe he is too close to home. And he is changing in subtle ways, slowly overcoming the awkwardness that he feels ‘marks’ him as being from his community.
He is stuck between two places, the one he knows intimately and the one he now feels drawn towards. He watches with envy as his friend Mairead moves assuredly through that world. It creates a tension in him, and he also struggles to move on from the friends that are stuck in the cycle that he felt he had moved on from.
Class
There is a tension when you move from a working class background into new university surroundings and academic circles. You do feel your background ‘marks’ you in some way, and I’m not sure if it ever leaves you. But when you look at that construct of yourself, what is it?
The writing is staccato, and the dialogue crackles with energy. I liked how it felt part of the prose, not separate or different. I love books where the conversation feels natural and the author makes this seem so easy. I’m always surprised at books where there is little dialogue - so much about us can be shown through speech.
I spent six years in Belfast so don’t know it as intimately as Micheal, but there are enough landmarks to make it seem familiar to me. It’s a small, knowable, city, and good to see No alibis and bookfinders mentioned, and West Belfast features heavily.
I wasn’t the only one who enjoyed ‘Close to home’. In a recent Irish Times interview with one of my favourite authors, the American novelist Richard Ford was asked what he was reading for pleasure. “And I’m just about to read Micheal Magee’s debut novel (Close to home). My wife’s read it. I couldn’t get it out of her hands.”
Hard to believe this is a debut novel - both visceral and tender, thoughtful and beautifully written.
288 pages, Hardcover
April 06, 2023 by Hamish Hamilton
My Score 4.5/5. Goodreads Score 4.2/5
July 23 Update - Michael Magee has now been nominated for the Waterstones debut fiction prize