Close To Home

A propulsive, gorgeous, gritty, confessional debut about masculinity, trauma, and class, Close to Home hits you with the sudden force of a speeding car. Dark, funny, and acutely observant, Michael Magee is a blazing new talent in Irish literature.

A man named Sean punches a stranger at a house party. It's an act of violence that ripples outwards-from the squatter's flat Sean shares with his mate, to the court room with its uppity judge, to the graveyards where he'll complete his mandated community service alongside other lost boys and men, to the forgotten streets of working-class Belfast, the one he's walked a million times.

Sean and his friends have it bad, but at least they know how to have a good time-turning tricks, doing gear-until history comes seeping in. The violence inflicted by their own parents, their bosses, the state, and the long shadow that the Troubles cast over everything, felt but never spoken.

A novel about fathers and sons, violence and trauma, and the way political and historical change occurs in our intimate relationships, Magee troubles the boundaries of fiction and life, offering a bracing and intimate vision of the Ireland's past and present.