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A debut novel exploring the long-term effects of prejudice and secrecy on a lesbian couple in the 1980s has won the Nero Gold prize.
Claire Lynch was presented with the £30,000 award for her book A Family Matter at a ceremony in London on Wednesday evening.
The judges admired 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,” said judging chair Nick Hornby. “It is both readable and intelligent, and it offers hope and consolation. We believe that this novel will be read and thought about for years to come.”
The Nero book awards, run by Caffè Nero, were launched in 2023 after Costa Coffee abruptly ended its book awards in June 2022. The prizes aim to point readers “of all ages and interests” towards the best books published in the UK and Ireland over the past year.
Lynch’s novel was among four category winners announced in January, with each subsequently competing for the Nero Gold prize for overall book of the year. A Family Matter won the debut fiction category and was chosen for the overall Gold prize. The other category winners were Seascraper by Benjamin Wood, which won the fiction category; Death of an Ordinary Man by Sarah Perry, winner of the nonfiction category; and My Soul, A Shining Tree by Jamila Gavin, which won the children’s fiction award. Each of the four category winners received £5,000.
Alternating between 1982 and present-day England, A Family Matter follows Maggie, who is forced to rethink her childhood after discovering her mother Dawn had a clandestine relationship with a woman when Maggie was still a toddler.
When Maggie’s father discovers the affair, a bitter custody battle ensues and her mother is stripped of child residence rights at the height of 1980s homophobia. At the time, lesbian mothers involved in divorce proceedings like Dawn’s almost always lost custody of their children; in her author’s note, Lynch explains that the cruel remarks made by the lawyers and judge in Maggie’s fictional hearing are drawn directly from real court transcripts of the era.
“In this small and powerful story, Lynch forces us to stare bigotry in the eye,” Joanna Cannon writes in her review for the Guardian. “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.”
Lynch is also the author of the nonfiction book Small: On Motherhoods, and lives in Windsor with her wife and three daughters.
Last year’s winner of the Nero Gold prize was Guardian Long Read writer Sophie Elmhirst for her novel Maurice and Maralyn, about the true story of a couple who were lost at sea for 118 days in the 70s after their boat was struck by a whale. The 2023 winner was Paul Murray for his novel The Bee Sting.
To be eligible for the 2025 Nero book awards, books must have been first published in English in the UK or Ireland between 1 December 2024 and 30 November 2025, and the author must have been resident in the UK or Ireland for the past three years.
