A family matter : a novel / Claire Lynch.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY * A Most Anticipated Book of 2025: USA TODAY , Goodreads, and Today.com

"This quietly heart-scorching novel took me one day to read, and I'll be thinking about it forever." --Barbara Kingsolver

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 in this "perfect" (Elin Hilderbrand) debut novel.

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.

A Family Matter is a heartbreaking and hopeful exploration of love and loss, intimacy and injustice, custody and care, and whether it is possible to heal from the wounds of the past in the changed world of today.

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

1. An Unexpected Item An unexpected item Five and a half hours after he found out he was dying, Heron drove to his favorite supermarket. In the absence of an alternative, and because it was a Thursday, he decided to stick to his routine. It is no secret that Heron likes to do his weekly food shop on a Thursday. In the evening, if at all possible, late afternoon at the earliest. His family teases him about it, his strange inflexibilities. "Live a little," his daughter had said last week. "Go shopping on a Monday morning, I dare you." But Thursdays are quiet and that suits him. Thursdays are sensible. Heron likes to start the weekend with a full fridge, although his weekends are, in truth, much like any other day of the week now. At the top of the escalator he finds a small shopping cart; a perfect compromise, he has always thought, since a big cart is really too much, a basket not quite enough. Heron is an organized shopper, placing each item into the reusable bag he has labeled for its corresponding kitchen cupboard. He keeps the cleaning products separate from the bread. He doesn't rush, or forget the milk, or squash the salad. Heron isn't one of those people who minds when they change the layout of the supermarket from time to time. If anything, he sort of enjoys it, the hint of scavenger hunt it gives to tracking down the thin-cut marmalade. He could not say, if asked, why he shops in this particular way, the system speaks for itself. Heron pushes his small cart to the farthest, coldest corner of the supermarket. For obvious reasons, frozen foods are always selected last. Today, in a significant break from routine, he slides open the glass lid of a waist-high chest freezer, flattens out the bags of potato smiley faces, and climbs inside. It is the smell rather than the cold he notices first. Even with the lid slightly open, the air inside the freezer is stale and starchy. He is as surprised as anyone to find it is actually quite comfortable inside a chest freezer, even with the frost starting to soak through at the backs of his knees. Heron adjusts his shoulder blades, stretches out his legs, and the frozen potato faces settle beneath him. He lies still in the muffled peace of the chest freezer, and he lives. Heron had felt sorry for the doctor in a way, a youngish woman, fiddling with her pen despite her best intentions. It can't be easy to have to say it out loud to someone. "There are leaflets. And websites," the doctor had said, and then she moved, just slightly, reaching out to touch her desk to show him that this part, at least, was over. Heron had stood up too fast, tangling his jacket on the back of the chair, saying, absurdly, "It's showerproof." And still, it wasn't as cold as you would think, in the freezer, or maybe it was so cold he couldn't tell anymore; that was a thought. Heron looks up through the fog on the glass lid. He looks beyond, to the fluorescent lights and steel joists of the supermarket ceiling. There are things he will have to do now. Things he will have to say. Admit. He looks at the ice dripping and shining on the inside walls of the freezer beside his head. The manic smiles and hollow eyes of the potato faces. He looks at these things and he is fine. Heron is so fine that he might have simply stayed in the freezer forever, had a woman not slid open his lid in search of frozen petits pois and screamed. It takes three members of staff to get him out. He is, as it turns out, quite cold indeed. The back of his head wet, his knees sore and stiffened. The manager is very good about it, cheerful even, when he says, "Let's get you out of there, sir, shall we?" and, "Is there someone we can call?" It is only when he gets home that Heron understands the tone of the manager's voice. Calm, tolerant, as if a man reclining in a freezer was just something one expects in a varied retail career. Heron understands then what the manager saw. A confused old man. Not quite all there. Not quite all here. Excerpted from A Family Matter: A Read with Jenna Pick: a Novel by Claire Lynch All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

Lynch's subtle and powerful debut novel (after the memoir Small: On Motherhood) centers on a family torn apart by a long-ago custody battle in a small English village. When Heron Barnes is diagnosed with terminal cancer, he can't manage to tell his daughter, Maggie, whom he normally shares everything with. A parallel narrative set in 1982 follows Heron's wife, Dawn, at 23, when Maggie is three. Dawn is captivated by Hazel, a teacher new to town, and the women begin an affair. After Dawn confesses to Heron, he throws her out. She continues to dote on Maggie until a solicitor suggests to Heron he attempt to gain full custody to protect Maggie from Dawn's influence. Back in the present, Maggie's grade schooler son asks Heron questions for a history project that Maggie herself has never been able to ask about her long-lost mother. When Maggie finally learns her father is dying, she goes through his papers and uncovers surprising details about the past, which run contrary to what she was told as a child. As the two narratives coalesce, Lynch devastatingly captures the homophobic prejudices of the era. Readers will be heart-struck. Agent: Sarah Fuentes, UTA. (June)

Booklist Review

Heron, whose real name is Henry, has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Stoic, practical, and orderly, he cannot bring himself to tell this to his daughter, Maggie, who is married and has children of her own. He also cannot tell her how he has been divorced for longer than he has been married, and that his ex-wife, Dawn, was deeply in love with another woman. Mostly, he cannot bear to tell Maggie that her mother was taken from her by discriminatory lawyers, social workers, and judges, who saw Dawn's lesbianism as a perversion. In her poignant debut, Lynch explores themes of motherhood, midlife crises, and hiding one's honest self in the face of massive societal obstacles. She writes from several different characters' perspectives and time lines, giving the reader a beautiful story of the struggles families face. In the end, though this book's main conflict is a tragic one, this is a story of hope and healing from a talented writer.

Kirkus Book Review

Minds can change over time--but can hearts? Two stories unfold in British author Lynch's debut novel, a straightforward but searching story of family, love, and loss. Heron is a divorced older man who receives a terminal cancer diagnosis and reacts to the news by keeping to his regular routine of grocery shopping--until he deposits himself into the frozen food case of his local supermarket. After being hauled out of the freezer by market employees, Heron continues life in his usual way. He delays sharing his diagnosis with his adult daughter, Maggie, since some things are best "papered over." Interwoven with Heron's story is one from 40 years prior, when a young wife and mother, Dawn, encounters another young woman at a community jumble sale. The growing friendship between Dawn and newcomer Hazel leads to an "earthquake" when the women kiss and begin a physical relationship. That Dawn and Heron were once married is no secret, nor is the fact of their divorce. What is shrouded by years of silence, however, is the reason for Dawn's disappearance from the family's life. As Maggie slowly comes to grips with Heron's condition and helps sort through, literally, the accumulated paperwork and detritus of a life, she is also negotiating her own way though middle age, haunted by a vague feeling that there is more to life than endless chores. Recalling her now-ill father as the parent who stayed with her and raised her post-divorce, Maggie believes she's repaying a debt of love. Lynch subtly untangles the threads--completely severed by 2022--that tied Maggie, Heron, and Dawn together as a family in the 1980s and exposes the forces that cut those ties as she raises thoughtful and heartbreaking questions about what really is in a child's best interest. An affecting exploration of the shelf life of love. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.