Close to Home, Michael Magee
Close to Home, Michael Magee
List: $35.99 | Sale: $25.20
Club: $17.99

Close to Home

Author: Michael Magee

Narrator: Conor MacNeill

Unabridged: 8 hr 18 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/29/2023


Synopsis

While growing up in West Belfast, Sean does every¬thing 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 broth¬ers 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. 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.

About Michael Magee

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.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Meike on October 08, 2023

In his debut novel, Magee tells the story of 22-year-old Sean, a Belfast working class kid who graduates with a degree in English, but can't find a job due to the recession. It's 2013 and Sean is adrift, his family, friends and the whole town are haunted by what happened during The Troubles, and his......more

Goodreads review by Michael on July 02, 2023

Belfast Bearings I was blown away by this novel, a telling of a young man’s struggle to redirect the path his life has taken. Sean forged his way through school in Belfast, journeyed to Liverpool to get his degree in English Lit, and returned home only to find himself tangled up in a world without o......more

Goodreads review by Elyse on May 28, 2023

Amazing debut….. A reminder that adolescent boys who cannot healthily express their emotions are more likely to participate in bullying, physical assault, and verbal abuse. The different expectations for being a man can leave a growing guy lost and confused about how they should act. Such toxic mascu......more

Goodreads review by Karen on July 27, 2023

A coming of age story. Sean has gotten a degree in literature from an English college.. returns home to northern Ireland and there are no job prospects here ... there’s a recession. He gets into some trouble hanging with old friends.. moving in and out of his mother’s small house.. things are just ver......more

Goodreads review by Barry on April 09, 2023

really fell for this!! though I have reservations about the main character (he has an english degree but had never been to poetry readings or seen a foreign film??)......more