Western Lane – Chetna Maroo

READ FOR BOOKERTHON

In this coming of age novel, 11-year-old Gopi takes up competitive squash as a way to cope with the grief of her mother’s death and the challenges of being an ethnic minority living in Britain.

● After some wordy novels on the Booker Prize shortlist this year, I very much appreciated the brevity and sparseness with which Chenta Maroo presented Western Lane. There is talent in being able to convey so much emotion and purpose not only with words used, but in words not used.

Like many others I had wondered how engaged I would be with a book about squash, but the characters drew me in from the outset and I appreciated how every move on the court represented Gopi’s outlook on life as she comes of age. The time spent on the squash courts is supported by a strong plot about Gopi’s family, in particular their attempt to overcome their grief, financial hardship and exposure to racism, to be a supportive and successful family unit. An uplifting read despite the sombre themes. – Rachel

I knew how to move on the court, and sometimes I hit beautiful, aggressive shots, but I was inconsistent. Ged had court sense. He knew where he was and where his
opponent was and he knew where to place the ball. In this way, he was an attacking
plater, but sometimes, when he had done the work, when he had set himself up to win, his mind wandered.

● Chetna Maroo’s story about Gopi, the youngest daughter of a grieving family navigating the pre-teen years, is both tender and subtle. Gopi and her family are aware of her special talents, but face the challenge of encouraging her to flourish against a backdrop of a disintegrating domestic environment. As a reader I felt myself strongly hoping that my own will would somehow help achieve Gopi get to where she needed to be.

The writing in Western Lane was without the often overwrought sentences of some of the other Booker shortlisters and somehow this often made it seem ‘less than’. However, as I reflect more on this I think its apparent simplicity was much more clever than I originally thought. – Suzy

Published 2023
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
160 pages