Close to Home: A Novel

“Michael Magee’s dead-on debut novel is universal.” —The New York Times Book Review

While growing up in West Belfast, Sean does everything 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 brothers and mad fathers; the same closed doors; the...