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.
“I’m genuinely knocked off my feet,” said Lynch, adding that the prize will “give me a bit of permission. I didn’t realise that I needed a prefect’s badge or something to say ‘You’re a real writer’, but it feels a bit like that”. The judging chair, Nick Hornby, praised the book’s “wry humour, deft storytelling and its love for all its characters, even those who behave in ways we find hard to understand”.
The Nero book awards, run by Caffè Nero, were launched in 2023 after Costa Coffee ended its book awards in 2022. A Family Matter won the debut fiction category in January, then competed for the overall Gold prize against three other category winners: Seascraper by Benjamin Wood (fiction), Death of an Ordinary Man by Sarah Perry (nonfiction), and My Soul, A Shining Tree by Jamila Gavin (children’s fiction). Each category winner received £5,000.
The novel alternates between 1982 and present-day England, following Maggie as she rethinks her childhood after discovering her mother Dawn had a clandestine relationship with a woman. When Maggie’s father discovers the affair, a bitter custody battle ensues, and her mother loses child residence rights at the height of 1980s homophobia. Lynch drew the cruel remarks from lawyers and judges directly from real court transcripts of the era.
Lynch, who lives in Windsor with her wife and three daughters, worked full-time while writing the novel, getting up at 5am or writing late at night. She described wanting to write a novel as “a midlife crisis in some ways”. Last year’s winner was Sophie Elmhirst for Maurice and Maralyn; the 2023 winner was Paul Murray for The Bee Sting.
