Mr Lynch's Holiday

Mr Lynch's Holiday is the new comic novel by Catherine O'Flynn, the bestselling and prize-winning author of What Was Lost and The News Where You Are.

'I'm looking forward to seeing you and Laura and getting my first taste of "abroad".' Eamonn Lynch stares at the letter announcing his father's imminent arrival. His first thought: I'll make an excuse, I'll put him off. But it's too late. Laura has left, and Dermot is already here, a fresh arrival from Ireland to southern Spain. Now it's just the two of them, father and son, for two long, hot weeks.

Neither knows quite what to make of the other. But as they are swept up in the British expats' ceaseless barbecuing and bickering, they begin to discover the truth about why each left home and about the family past. At the same time they uncover a shocking, unacknowledged secret at the heart of this defiant but beleaguered community.


Mr Lynch's Holiday is the moving story of a father and son pushed together in sunny Spain. With warmth and wit it is about the clash of generations; about how families fracture and heal themselves; and about how living "abroad" can be less like a holiday and more like a life sentence.


'An awesomely talented writer' Jonathan Coe

'Delightful ... a rare love story between a father and a son' Sunday Telegraph


'Subtle, clever and thoroughly enjoyable' Sunday Mirror

'A remarkable and original writer ... tenderness, warmth, thoughtfulness and comic genius are words that are flung around a lot, but it's more than that. She flinches at nothing and is as sharp as dammit' Fay Weldon, Observer

'A flow of laugh-aloud satire ... sharp enough to rank her with Mark Haddon and Marina Lewckya' Independent on Sunday on The News Where You Are


Catherine O'Flynn was born in 1970 and raised in Birmingham, the youngest of six children. Her debut novel, What Was Lost, won the Costa First Novel Award, was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and was longlisted for the Booker and Orange Prizes. Her second novel, The News Where You Are, was shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize...read more...