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 small and powerful story, Lynch forces us to stare bigotry in the eye. She does this not only with smart and often heartbreaking observations of human behaviour, but also by weaving in difficult truths. Her author’s note reveals that the brutal and savage words spoken during Maggie’s custody hearing are taken from real-life court transcripts ... One of the most important roles of a writer is to give a platform to those less often noticed. Not only does Lynch’s novel lend a voice to the many thousands of people who were forced to remain silent, bound by the prejudice of 'different times', it shouts that injustice from its pages.
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 through his teeth, the novel pulls its punches. I didn’t believe that the characters would behave as they did, and so I didn’t feel their pain or their catharsis as deeply as I should have ... Though elegant on the sentence level and important as a message of warning, A Family Matter is ultimately too gentle to deliver its awful blow.
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 ... Lynch's astute observations capture the complexity of a person in a few sentences ... Lynch lets small details through, little by little, as she steers the story with strength and elegance ... Readers will find themselves catching their breath at the truth and beauty of many of Lynch's sentences. Through her characters, Lynch shows her audience that love between people may change or plateau or grow by leaps and bounds, but as long as they want to keep it, they will ... A gem of a novel, an appreciation of the small moments of connection that last a lifetime
