Chatto pre-empts Claire Lynch's 'gut punch of a novel' for six figures

Chatto & Windus has made a six-figure pre-empt for Claire Lynch’s debut novel, A Family Matter. 

The publisher dubbed it “a short, completely immersive, gut punch of a novel for readers of Claire Keegan, Maggie O’Farrell and Louise Kennedy”. 

Kaiya Shang, commissioning editor, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Emma Finn at C&W with publication scheduled for spring 2025.  

The book has also caught attention internationally. Kara Watson, vice-president at Scribner, won North American rights from Sarah Fuentes at United Talent Agency in a "major" auction.

Chatto said: "German rights were snapped up in a six-figure pre-empt (Penguin/PRH), with very strong pre-empts following for Spanish (Literatura Random House), Swedish (Bokfabriken), Catalan (Periscopi), Greek (Metaichmio) and Italian (Fazi) rights, and international interest continues to pour in." 

The blurb reads: “It’s 2022, and Heron has just had the sort of visit to the doctor that turns a life upside down. He’s an old man, he knows it’s no tragedy, but how can he leave Maggie? His only daughter, and the person his life has revolved around for so long... what kind of man has he been? He likes to think he’s tried his best, but there are some decisions you just can’t take back.  

“It’s 1982, and Dawn is a young mother – just beginning to adjust to life in her husband’s house rather than her parents’ – when Hazel breezes into her life like a torch in the dark. It’s the kind of connection that’s impossible to resist... but Dawn has Maggie.”  

Shang said: “I was profoundly moved by this novel, inspired by a shocking historical injustice: in the 1980s, in almost 90% of family court cases where a mother was found to have had a lesbian affair, sole custody of her children and all access decisions were granted to the father. Claire Lynch writes with such exquisite beauty and sensitivity, exploring how a family might heal from these wounds in the changed world of today. A Family Matter is at once heartbreaking and hopeful.”  

Lynch said: “I’m honoured, and not a little overwhelmed, by the way this book has found its home with Kaiya and Kara. A Family Matter is a novel about the chance of being born at the ‘right’ time. It’s about what it can cost us to live in our families, and to love them.” 

Finn described the book as “intimate, heart-wrenching and illuminating in equal measure”. She added: “I’d struggle to overstate how much the characters in these pages mean to me. Claire is such a rare talent – with her sharp eye, her compassion, her ability to capture the nuance of the human condition – and it has been the greatest pleasure to see the remarkable response to her debut novel.” 

Lynch is a university lecturer and scholar of English and Irish literature based in Windsor. Her memoir about starting a family with her wife amid fertility struggles – Small: On Motherhoods – was published by Octopus in 2021.

Her talk "The Other Mother" was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and she has been recognised by various schemes including the Spread the Word Life Writing Prize, the Penguin Random House WriteNow scheme, the London Library Emerging Writers Programme and the Arvon Short Story competition.