You can’t help wondering whether Michael Magee, the new winner of the Waterstones Irish Book of the Year award, is pinching himself. The last eight months, the 33-year-old tells me in an Ormeau Road café near his home, have been “mental”. He published his debut novel, Close to Home, in the spring to instant, deserved acclaim. Critic and novelist Louise Kennedy noted: “Nobody else is doing this. Absolutely glorious.”
The story itself is close to home, as Magee reveals: “Yeah, it’s pretty autobiographical. The punch scene is something that more or less happened.”
Read more: Irish writer Paul Lynch on his Booker Prize shortlisted novel Prophet Song
The dramatic event, which occurs fairly early on, consists of an incident at a party where Sean, our protagonist, loses it and floors a Malone Road posh boy. Magee writes about the aftermath when Sean encounters a girl who was at the party: “‘You attacked our friend. You punched him in the face.’
“‘Punched who? What’re you on about?’
“’I was there, I saw you.’”
“She was short this girl, no higher than my shoulder in heels, yet the fury in her face rooted me to the floor.
“‘Your head’s lit, love, I wasn’t at any party.’”
Of course, he was, and the psychological and actual consequences, shape the novel. The key relationship in Sean’s life is with Mairead Riley who is believable, likeable, a bit fragile. “It’s love,” according to the author.
“They’ve fumbled about, done that, but they’re friends. And their connection acts as a corrective to the also well conveyed violence and casual maleness exhibited by Sean and his mate Ryan, particularly in the first part of the novel when they’re on a coke-fuelled kind of merry-go-round.
Michael Magee’s partner, Ellen, works for the QFT and he says that when he won the award, he celebrated by buying her a guitar: “She’ll kill me for telling you that...”
Both of them are learning Irish, and Magee says he likes relaxing to music, including folk, the Wolfe Tones and other bands.
“Ian Paisley organised a campaign against its being built in the 80s as it was near Lisburn and they didn’t want any more Catholics living there. It was very poor, there was little infrastructure
— Michael Magee
Magee’s clever choice of voice for the narrator and his way with Belfast speech are utterly convincing throughout.
“I chose a voice early on,” he says. “As a writer, you learn to read books looking for technique, structure.” He studied creative writing at Liverpool University and says that helped his writing genesis.
Class structure informs Close to Home and also Magee’s politics. He was brought up in a two-bedroom terraced home in Poleglass by his mother, a single mum, and the experience remains pretty raw.
He says now: “Ian Paisley organised a campaign against its being built in the 80s as it was near Lisburn and they didn’t want any more Catholics living there. It was very poor, there was little infrastructure.”
I am Irish, not British or Northern Irish
Magee’s mother ensured her son, the youngest of three boys, knew his Irish heritage and history: “It’s something we wouldn’t have learnt at school.”
In Magee’s analysis, the Troubles should be seen as class driven rather than simply the result of sectarianism.
“It’s more complex than that. You don’t hear of middle-class people here who lost many family members but half my grandfather’s family were lost.”
“I do regard it as a nine to five job and the money from the Waterstones award – I won’t say how much – will enable me to continue for a while
— Michael Magee
Later, he adds that his father didn’t want him to have an identifiably Irish Christian name: “He felt if I was noticeably Catholic, I’d be more likely to be held up against a wall by the police.” It would be something like being a person of colour in some parts of the States.
“I don’t vote SDLP, too diluted,” he continues. “I understand your question about whether the book award should be simply Book of the Year but we’re excited that it’s an Irish award. I am Irish, not British or Northern Irish.”
Today Magee lives in gentrified Ormeau Road and is a full-time writer. “I do regard it as a nine to five job and the money from the Waterstones award – I won’t say how much – will enable me to continue for a while,” he explains.
“I get out of bed and go to the laptop where I write. I use ambient music, people like Philip Glass and Arvo Pärt that Radio 3 is good for, as background. My creative writing tutor set me a task, and I’ve spoken about this, of writing a letter to myself.
“It includes the things you want to say but haven’t said. He said you had to write without thinking too much.”
Asked what he’d produced that day, Magee admitted he had been busy with other things. Namely organising a writers’ pro-Palestine event to raise consciousness and money for the conflict in the Middle East.
“I’ve helped organise events in Belfast and Dublin and we have had big names, Anna Burns, more,” he tells me.
Magee’s name is unquestionably going to join that publishing pantheon and in a sense it’s an Irish year, with Paul Lynch winning the Booker prize with Prophet Song.
Magee always wanted to write. He started young, producing rip offs of Lord of the Rings as a teenager - “One was quite a long book” - and as so often with successful authors, there was an inspiring English teacher at La Salle Boys’.
“He put me on to Ernest Hemingway and after reading this spare style, I changed,” says Magee.
He namechecks Alice Munro as a writer he rates highly, going on to admit that while he admires another great short story writer, Raymond Carver, he can’t read him any more: “I enjoyed him when I was younger, but he’s so distinctive that if I re-read him, I risk copying him.”
Asked whether he recognises himself in interviews. Mr Magee says “sometimes” but that he isn’t over-influenced by what journalists write: “I shall read this piece with half an eye...”
