Sean Maguire

Sean Maguire is the main character and first person narrator of the novel. At the start of Close to Home, Sean has recently “moved back home” to Belfast after completing his degree in English literature in Liverpool (29). Although the city is familiar to him, this familiarity quickly causes Sean to regress. He starts spending the majority of his time partying with his old school friends, Ryan and Finty. He works at a bar, but struggles to maintain this job and to support himself. He and Ryan are living in a squalid flat where they have not paid rent since the landlord “did a runner to Spain, leaving a load of properties to be repossessed” (6). Although Sean appreciates the inexpensiveness of the flat, the apartment’s boiler is broken and there is “no heat in the radiators” and “no hot water” (6). These living circumstances are indeed a micro...