A FAMILY MATTER

Minds can change over time—but can hearts?

Two stories unfold in British author Lynch’s debut novel, a straightforward but searching story of family, love, and loss. Heron is a divorced older man who receives a terminal cancer diagnosis and reacts to the news by keeping to his regular routine of grocery shopping—until he deposits himself into the frozen food case of his local supermarket. After being hauled out of the freezer by market employees, Heron continues life in his usual way. He delays sharing his diagnosis with his adult daughter, Maggie, since some things are best “papered over.” Interwoven with Heron’s story is one from 40 years prior, when a young wife and mother, Dawn, encounters another young woman at a community jumble sale. The growing friendship between Dawn and newcomer Hazel leads to an “earthquake” when the women kiss and begin a physical relationship. That Dawn and Heron were once married is no secret, nor is the fact of their divorce. What is shrouded by years of silence, however, is the reason for Dawn’s disappearance from the family’s life. As Maggie slowly comes to grips with Heron’s condition and helps sort through, literally, the accumulated paperwork and detritus of a life, she is also negotiating her own way though middle age, haunted by a vague feeling that there is more to life than endless chores. Recalling her now-ill father as the parent who stayed with her and raised her post-divorce, Maggie believes she’s repaying a debt of love. Lynch subtly untangles the threads—completely severed by 2022—that tied Maggie, Heron, and Dawn together as a family in the 1980s and exposes the forces that cut those ties as she raises thoughtful and heartbreaking questions about what really is in a child’s best interest.

An affecting exploration of the shelf life of love.