Claire Lynch has won the Nero Gold prize for her debut novel A Family Matter, which explores the long-term effects of prejudice and secrecy on a lesbian couple in the 1980s. The £30,000 award was presented at a ceremony in London on Wednesday evening.
Lynch said she was “genuinely knocked off my feet” and that the prize gave her “permission” to see herself as a real writer. Judging chair Nick Hornby praised the book’s “wry humour, deft storytelling and its love for all its characters”.
The novel alternates between 1982 and present-day England, following Maggie as she uncovers her mother Dawn’s clandestine lesbian affair and the subsequent custody battle that stripped Dawn of her parental rights amid 1980s homophobia. Lynch drew directly from real court transcripts of the era for the fictional hearing.
A Family Matter won the debut fiction category in January, competing against three other category winners for the overall Gold prize. The other winners were Benjamin Wood’s Seascraper (fiction), Sarah Perry’s Death of an Ordinary Man (nonfiction), and Jamila Gavin’s My Soul, A Shining Tree (children’s fiction). Each category winner received £5,000.
Lynch, who also wrote the nonfiction book Small: On Motherhoods, lives in Windsor with her wife and three daughters. She wrote the novel while working full-time, often rising at 5am to write. The Nero book awards, run by Caffè Nero, were launched in 2023 after Costa Coffee ended its book awards.
