A Family Matter
First published 2025 · debut
Reception
Rave reviews. 3 of 4 critics gave a rave.
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“In this small and powerful story, Lynch forces us to stare bigotry in the eye.”
2 more quotes
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“By taking care to make Heron a likable character, and by reducing to a distant memory, uncovered in the present, the years of hiding birthday cards, avoiding questions and lying…”
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“Spare and direct and filled with beauty … Much of the strength of Lynch’s exquisite novel derives from what is unsaid—by her and by her characters”
- 2026 Longlist
About the book
Read the full description
A young wife following her heart. A husband with the law on his side. Their daughter, caught in the middle. Forty years later, a family secret changes everything.
1982\. Dawn is a young mother, still adjusting to life with her husband, when Hazel lights up her world like a torch in the dark. Theirs is the kind of connection that’s impossible to resist, and suddenly life is more complicated, and more joyful, than Dawn ever expected. But she has responsibilities and commitments. She has a daughter.
2022\. Heron has just received news from his doctor that turns everything upside down. He’s an older man, stuck in the habits of a quiet existence. Telling Maggie, his only child—the person around whom his life has revolved—seems impossible. Heron can’t tell her about his diagnosis, just as he can’t reveal all the other secrets he’s been keeping from her for so many years.
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Catalogue record
Scribner, 2025 · 240 pages
- Publisher
- Scribner, 2025
- Pages
- 240
- LC · Dewey
- PR6112.Y527 F36 · 823.92
- ISBN
- 978-1-6680-7891-4
Full recordClose
- Publisher
- Scribner, 2025
- Pages
- 240
- LC
- PR6112.Y527 F36
- Dewey
- 823.92
- ISBNs
-
- 978-1-6680-7891-4
- 978-1-78474-584-4
- 978-1-6680-7889-1
- 978-1-78474-583-7
- Editions
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- Scribner, 2025, hardcover, 240 pages
- Scribner, 2025, 240 pages
- Penguin Random House, 2025, 208 pages
- Penguin Random House, 2025, 208 pages
- Author
- Lynch, Claire, 1981–
- Statement
- A Family Matter / Claire Lynch.
- Records
- Open Library Wikidata
- United Kingdom
- 2020s
- LGBTQ+ lives
- Historical fiction
- Family
- Queer
- Historical