After John of John
Close to Home by Michael Magee
If Glasgow's rancid underbelly in John of John left you breathless, Belfast's post-Troubles wreckage will hit with the same stale-sweat authenticity. Michael Magee excavates familial collapse and class shame with dialect-heavy prose that refuses to airbrush the booze-stained furniture or the trapped lives suffocating under sectarian ghosts. This is the gut-punch realism that makes you ugly-cry, no cozy escape allowed.