I’d been endlessly geed up about the ‘other Belfast novelist’, as if we were obliged to be enemies. I wasn’t having it, says writer Rachel Connolly
who works in the vague publishing ecosystem declared: “Oh Michael Magee’s book. That was a great book! I loved his book. I’m sure you’ll like it.” I told him I’d heard as much, and I was excited to read it. Then: “And you have a book out too set in Belfast. Well, you might even get to interview him about his book.” I smiled and told him that would be fantastic.
And the reality is that we all share a bigger, common enemy: a world in which people broadly just don’t buy books and an industry which is generally not good at supporting people doing genuinely good or interesting work. So the idea of a rivalry didn’t make much sense to me. And then I read Close to Home and it was wonderful, absolutely wonderful, and I wanted to be friends with Michael Magee.
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