I am delighted to be joining in with the longlist celebrations for The Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize 2024. My focus today will be on Close to Home by Michael Magee, but first here is a quick overview of the Prize and the full list of titles.
The Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize is the world’s largest and most prestigious literary prize for young writers. The longlist for 2024 was revealed on January 25th featuring twelve titles, with writers hailing from across the globe. The shortlist will be announced on Thursday 21st March, followed by the Winner’s Ceremony, which will be held in Swansea on Thursday 16th May.
Longlist
- A Spell of Good Things by Ayòbámi Adébáyò (Canongate Books) – novel (Nigeria)
- Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson (Viking, Penguin Random House UK) – novel (UK/Ghana)
- The Glutton by A. K. Blakemore (Granta) – novel (England, UK)
- Bright Fear by Mary Jean Chan (Faber & Faber) – poetry collection (Hong Kong)
- Penance by Eliza Clark (Faber & Faber) – novel (England, UK)
- The Coiled Serpent by Camilla Grudova (Atlantic Books) – short story collection (Canada)
- Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein (Bloomsbury Publishing UK/Ecco, HarperCollins US) – novel (Trinidad and Tobago)
- Local Fires by Joshua Jones (Parthian Books) – short story collection (Wales, UK)
- Biography of X by Catherine Lacey (Granta) – novel (US)
- Close to Home by Michael Magee (Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Random House UK) – novel (Northern Ireland, UK)
- Open Up by Thomas Morris (Faber & Faber) – short story collection (Wales, UK)
- Divisible by Itself and One by Kae Tempest (Picador, Pan Macmillan) – poetry collection (England, UK)
Close to Home
Sean’s brother Anthony is a hard man. When they were kids their ma did her best to keep him out of trouble but you can’t say anything to Anto. Sean was supposed to be different. He was supposed to leave and never come back. But Sean does come back.
Arriving home after university, he finds Anthony’s drinking is worse than ever. Meanwhile the jobs in Belfast have vanished, 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 loses control and assaults a stranger at a party, and everything is tipped into chaos. Close to Home witnesses the aftermath of that night, as Sean attempts to make sense of who he has become, and to reckon with the relationships that have shaped him, for better and worse.
Luminous and devastating, Close to Home is a novel about deciding what kind of man you want to be, and finding your place in the scarred city you call home.
“There was nothing to it. I swung and hit him and he dropped. A girl came flying forward and pushed me. What’d you do that for? The lad was lying there and I was standing over him and there were people all around me making noise”
Close to Home by Michael Magee published April 6th 2023 with Hamish Hamilton and has received staggering reviews and accolades from across the board. Michael Magee has also been the recipient of numerous awards, most recently the Debut Fiction Category Winner at the Nero Book Awards. Described as a novel about ‘contemporary masculinity’ Close to Home was inspired by Magee’s personal experiences. In the novel he ‘examines the forces which keep young working class men in harm’s way, in a debut novel which shines with intelligence and humanity on every page.’
It’s 2013 and Sean is back in Belfast after completing his degree in Liverpool. Sean is from a working class family, growing up in a society that is trying to rebuild itself following The Troubles. His older brother Anthony is a hard man, a drinking man and his mother is struggling to stay afloat. Sean had dreams of escaping, of becoming someone different, of having a life beyond the tentacles of this world of poverty and addiction. But Sean is angry and frustrated. Life back home is very hard for Sean. He can’t find suitable employment. His friends are emigrating and he feels himself being slowly pulled back in to the life he has tried so very hard to liberate himself from.
Close to Home is a completely immersive reading experience exploring the difficulties faced by a young man as his dreams come crashing down around him. Sean is caught between his past and this community that he belongs to and his desire to become someone else. His longing for a new life is palpable but circumstances are stacked against him at every turn. Relationships, family dynamics and the magnetic draw of the homeplace are all deftly explored in this complex novel. Fighting upstream against a culture that is embedded is exhausting. Sometimes it’s just easier to give up and give in. Sean is constantly trying to break through barriers but society has other plans.
Close to Home is a powerful examination of the influence of heritage and culture on behaviour and relationships. It is a story of survival, a struggle for freedom and the desire to transcend society’s expectations. It is an intense exploration of male friendships and the intimacies that such bonds create. Heartbreaking at times, Close to Home is a very authentic and striking tale, a tender perceptive novel and one that I am very happy to recommend.
Wishing Michael Magee and all the longlisted nominees the very best of luck on March 21st.
[ Bio ]
Michael Magee is the fiction editor of the Tangerine and a graduate of the creative writing PhD programme at Queen’s University, Belfast. His writing has appeared in Winter Papers, The Stinging Fly, The Lifeboat and The 32: The Anthology of Irish Working-Class Voices. Close to Home is his first novel. It was shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize 2023 and won the Rooney Prize for Literature 2023.
