Western Lane: Shortlisted For The Booker Prize 2023

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This conveys all the tensions – between care and resentment, responsibility and envy – that play out over the course of the story. Instead, she’s listening to the sound of the ball hitting the wall on the adjacent court, “a quick, low pistol-shot of a sound, with a close echo. This challenge was particularly pronounced when she had to switch between the perspective of the child and the retrospective narrator. She noted that the very first page, which she had originally penned and read aloud, remained unaltered throughout the writing process and acted as her guiding principle. Given the familiar storyline presented, The Guardian's Caleb Klaces noted that readers "might expect Western Lane to feel formulaic, but it doesn’t.

Whenever she felt adrift during her writing, she would revisit that opening page, which she considered a steadfast anchor for her creative orientation.

She mentioned that as she delved into these narratives and explored other novels, she encountered the challenge of maintaining a consistent narrative voice. There was also something about the squash court itself, about the simple white box: it’s such a surreal, unfamiliar place, and in part because of the unfamiliarity it’s a place where time seems suspended and the outside world can be forgotten.

All this to say, I’m not sure how best to categorise Western Lane but I’m interested in how readers read it.

Western Lane is about a young girl and her family who are grieving the loss of a family member, and who channel this grief into squash. Booklist also reviewed the novel, [9] as well the audiobook, noting that "London actor [Maya] Saroya is a gentle, measured cipher, moving seamlessly between the crisper British English of the sisters and their contemporaries and the more lyrical South Asian accents of the older generation. I didn’t have a plot or outline for the whole novel, but I had a sense that the story would turn on this one question: would Pa bring himself to let one of his daughters go? In the unlikely arena of a high-pressure tournament match, she finally discovers a place where “no one was rushing me, and if I wanted to, I could think”. Soon Pa is neglecting his job as an electrician and turning a blind eye to his family’s financial troubles, not to mention their emotional ones.

It seemed such an off-the-wall idea but it brought to my mind something Lorrie Moore suggested in her introduction to The Faber Book of Contemporary Stories About Childhood: that the acquisition of knowing and the subject of knowing or not knowing are ‘the unshakeable centre of any childhood story’. Soon Gopi discovers a talent that draws the attention of Ged, the son of the club’s white manager, who becomes her training partner; and Maqsud, a Pakistani businessman and avid squash player who convinces Pa to enter his daughter into a tournament.When Gopi occasionally remembers something about her mother, it is visceral – watching Wimbledon while eating strawberries with sugar. Interestingly, before embarking on her writing career, Chetna Maroo had worked as an accountant, a lesser-known facet of her professional journey.

Recently a friend asked me if the book has something of the detective story about it, with Gopi trying to find her way, piecing together the clues of small gestures, actions and fragments of overheard conversations; she has little to go on and since she’s dealing with the mysteries of loss, there are no answers for her.At the start of Chetna Maroo’s polished and disciplined debut, Gopi, an 11-year-old Jain girl who has just lost her mother, stands on a squash court outside London.