Bookseller Reviews
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A painful, but beautifully handled story
I saw another review that said this book plays its cards close to its chest. I couldn’t agree more. A Family Matter is quietly heartbreaking and filled wit... READ MORE
Beautifully written story.
A very powerful and beautifully written story, A Family Matter highlights a forgotten part of British history and its repercussions in modern times.
Se... READ MORE
An important read
This beautifully written debut will really tug at your heart strings as well as shine a light on an important miscarriage of justice that happened to thous... READ MORE
the perfect bookclub read!
This is one of those books you finish and immediately think, I need to talk to someone about this.Full of compassion, complexity, and impossible choices, i... READ MORE
What a good fiction book should be
A story of a fractured family in two times: now, and in the 1980s. Maggie, a child in the 80s, now a mother herself, must contend with revelations about he... READ MORE
Powerful and tender
This beautiful novel gripped me from the start and I couldn't put it down. It's a story about parental love as well as forbidden love.
It depicts how pr... READ MORE
A Delicate and Moving Account of Family Heartbreak
This is a gorgeously delicate and sensitive story with a way of saying so much in so few lucid words that is reminiscent of Claire Keegan. What shocked me ... READ MORE
Synopsis
A mother following her heart. A father with the law on his side. A child caught in the middle.
1982 Dawn is a young wife and mother hemmed in by village life. Then Hazel appears like a torch in the dark. Their attraction is instant and suddenly Dawn’s world is more joyful, and more complicated, than she ever expected.
2022 Maggie has always lived with an absence where her mother should be. Her father never speaks of her and it feels impossible to ask. Then an official letter arrives with news from the past, and Maggie must face a truth far bigger than just her family’s secret.
Publisher information
- Publisher: Vintage Publishing
- ISBN: 9781529942354
- Number of pages: 224
- Dimensions: 197 x 130 x 16 mm
- Weight: 164g
- Languages: English
Customer Reviews
View allQuietly Powerful
This is an intriguing novel that plays its cards close to its chest. Heron is an elderly man who has received a difficult diagnosis from his doctor. He has... READ MORE
Powerful, understated, heartbreakingly so at times. 4.5/5
This book mainly switches between the lives of Heron now in 2022/23 and Dawn some forty years earlier. As the title suggest it really is a "family matter"... READ MORE
An incredibly powerful and beautiful book
There aren’t many books that when you’re 10 pages in you know will be excellent, 5 stars or more if you want to put a star rating on it. I can hardly descr... READ MORE
Fabulous Debut
Thank you to the publishers for this fabulous debut.
Claire Lynch is clearly a great author that I now will be hoping for many future books from.
This is... READ MORE
Poignant
This book has everything I love in a great read..... characters in emotional turmoil, relationships, family secrets and a bit of history. It is a story of ... READ MORE
Perfection!
A Family Matter by Claire Lynch
Set in 1982 and 2022 we discover how Heron, now at the end of his life, came to bring up his daughter Maggie alone, and ... READ MORE
Five stars!
Sometimes, a book doesn’t just tell a story. It gently pulls at your heartstrings and makes you reconsider what truly matters in life. A Family Matter, the... READ MORE
A sad story.
Such a sad story that vividly reflects how times have changed for the better. That a child should be deprived of her mother because the mother does not con... READ MORE
An emotional and well written debut novel
I have had to let this emotional story settle in my mind for a few days before writing a review.
First of all, the quality of writing is excellent and the... READ MORE
A life observed…
I really loved this book. It told a story which isn’t told enough in the history of lgbt life. The reunion had a realness about it that is unusual in liter... READ MORE
A moving and totally absorbing story
A moving and totally absorbing story that expertly combines a work of fiction with the harsh realities of a little-known side of 1980s history. Sympathetic... READ MORE
An interesting read
This book is written in two timescales - 1982 and 2022. In 1982 Dawn lives with her husband Heron and daughter Maggie and then she meets and falls in love ... READ MORE
Unbelievably only forty year ago
Unbelievably only forty years ago.
How things have changed for the better.
This book is the story of Heron and his wife Dawn, they have a little girl Mag... READ MORE
An Emotional Read
Wow! This book is so hard to read emotionally, however the writing is impeccable and Claire Lynch holds your hand, ensuring you are led theough the srory... READ MORE
Masterful
I was honestly blown away by this book and the journey the author managed to take us on in a fairly short book. It’s really is a blistering debut.
The ... READ MORE
Outstanding Debut
An important book that shines a light into an injustice against women which persisted in fairly recent history. Heron brought his daughter Maggie up on hi... READ MORE
A heartbreaking, vital book
This was a powerful, deeply moving read that left me both heartbroken and furious in equal measures. Told in dual timelines between 1982 and 2022, the stor... READ MORE
A heart-felt novel about family dynamics
I knew I was going to love this book from the first chapter and I was right, I read the whole thing in one sitting!
We follow three characters, Heron, ... READ MORE
Claire Lynch’s 'A Family Matter' is a heartbreaking look at family, history, and the stories that we tell or don't about our families
Claire Lynch’s 'A Family Matter' is a heartbreaking look at family, history, and the stories that we tell or don't about our families. The narrative is tol... READ MORE
Easy read
A short, easy read but I didn't find it particularly engaging or involving. I enjoyed the author's notes the most, and think I would have preferred a non-f... READ MORE
A Family Matter
A good read. The book straddles the years between 1982 and 2022. Heron lives in Scotland now and has ill health. He keeps himself to himself and the vil... READ MORE
Echoes between us
Claire Lynch’s A Family Matter is a quietly devastating, gorgeously wrought novel that slips its hand gently into yours, only to press your pulse with unbe... READ MORE
Stunning, powerful debut!
Oh wow! What a beautiful book. It totally broke my heart! It’s not a long one, at little over 200 pages but it packs an absolute punch and it is one of tho... READ MORE
Heart-breaking and powerful
The tactful, tasteful and exquisite unveiling of this multi-layered and multi-faceted story is a joy. Based on the social mores of the 1980s, which have ch... READ MORE
Poignant & moving
A Family Matter by Claire Lynch
Published by Chatto & Windus
Publication Date 29/5/25
Poignant and at times, heartbreaking, it’s crazy to realise thes... READ MORE
Really good - book club choice
Whenever I am reading a new book, I wonder what my book club would think. A Family Matter by Clare Lynch would definitely make a brilliant book club choice... READ MORE
Sad story of child custody
There is an enormous gap between the attitudes of the early eighties and forty years later, with regard to mother’s rights in child custody cases, and wors... READ MORE
A thought provoking tale
Claire Lynch gives us a very well written story that deals with a situation that existed in the 1980s and earlier, but that thankfully has now been resolve... READ MORE
A poignant family story over two generations
A beautifully told tale of a family full of love, prized apart by the intrusion of officialdom in their moment of grief. Wonderful characterisation and sce... READ MORE
emotional and impactful short read
Grateful ARC recipient
This book is small but mighty and packs a punch. It's an emotional journey for both leads, whose stories are equally sad but int... READ MORE
A Family Matter by Claire Lynch
4 stars
4 stars
4 stars
4 stars
4 stars
A Family Matter by Claire Lynch is the story of a mother and a daughter, Dawn and Maggie and how times have ch... READ MORE
Engaging
We start with the fairly mundane interactions of Heron and his adult daughter Maggie, interspersed with the ordinary life of Dawn with her young daughter a... READ MORE
A sad but worthwhile read
I found this short book quite moving and very thought provoking. Heron is an interesting character and his daughter, Maggie, comes through stronger as the ... READ MORE
A quiet family story
When Dawn falls in love with a woman, she and her husband Heron divorce. The choices they make affect their daughter in big and small ways forty years late... READ MORE
Emotional family story
Maggie was brought up by her father Heron because her mother Dawn left them for another man, or so she has been told. In fact, Dawn fell in love with anoth... READ MORE
Unbelievable what happened in the 1980s!
At the start of the novel, an old man, Heron, is having to face up to the challenge of telling his daughter, Maggie, about a diagnosis which is probably te... READ MORE
Heartbreaking and beautiful
It’s 2022, and we meet Heron, an old man living on his own, and his daughter, Maggie, who has he raised by himself. Maggie has never known her mother and b... READ MORE
different
This book was not what I expected it to be. I went into it thinking it would follow a more traditional storyline, but it took a different direction. One th... READ MORE
An absence at the heart
In 2022, pensioner Heron has had the worst news from his doctor, and now he has to share it with his daughter Maggie, but he doesn’t have the words, not fo... READ MORE
Small in size but huge in heart…
Some books are quiet, unassuming little things that slip into your life and then refuse to leave. A Family Matter is one of those books.
This short nove... READ MORE
Captivating and eye opening
I found this book instantly captivating and endlessly eye opening. Through a series of flashbacks we learn about how a lesbian mother lost custody of her d... READ MORE