Western Lane: Shortlisted For The Booker Prize 2023

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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? The language barrier meant they “pulled at her, pushed into her, made ourselves physical in her presence”. It’s humbling to see Western Lane amongst all the books that have been longlisted in the history of the prize. 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.

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’. 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. Chetna Maroo’s debut novel begins a few days after 11-year-old Gopi’s mother’s funeral, which leaves Gopi and her two older sisters in the care of their father. The tension is heightened by squash-obsessed, emotionally uncommunicative Pa; fearful Aunt Ranjan is the obstacle that stands in Gopi’s way.

I have to trust that the work will benefit in the end from the rhythm and slow quality of this attention. Cautioned by a concerned relative to find a healthy outlet for his daughters, Pa turns the family’s casual weekly squash game at a local sports center into daily, determined training sessions. She becomes aware that Aunt Ranjan and Uncle Pavan, who have no children of their own, want her to live with them in Edinburgh.

When Gopi occasionally remembers something about her mother, it is visceral – watching Wimbledon while eating strawberries with sugar. Her literary accomplishments also include being honored with the 2022 Plimpton Prize for Fiction, a prestigious recognition bestowed by the Paris Review to acknowledge exceptional works of fiction published in the magazine during the preceding year. He said this, but with his eyes and his body – his shoulders, his throat, the white bones visible under his skin – he was telling us that in one day we had exposed him, left him behind, left him wide open to whatever was coming for him. After their increasingly strenuous training sessions, he and Gopi spend hours watching videos of the legendary athlete Jahangir Kahn and his rivals Geoff Hunt and Hiddy Jahan. All this to say, I’m not sure how best to categorise Western Lane but I’m interested in how readers read it.The narrative of ‘Western Lane’ revolves around the life of an 11-year-old girl named Gopi and her intricate relationships within her family. 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. Language is hampered by stammers and cultural barricades as well as by things too scary and distressing to sound out. To navigate the sport’s punishing constraints, Gopi learns, you “have to find the shots and make the space you need”.

In the aftermath of their mother’s death, a strangulated silence envelops the house Gopi shares with her older sisters, Mona and Khush.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.

Interestingly, before embarking on her writing career, Chetna Maroo had worked as an accountant, a lesser-known facet of her professional journey. What made you choose sport - and squash in particular - as a way for the family to deal with their grief?Hers is an unhurried performance, as if leaving open breathing room for the unspeakable, the absent, and perhaps even a little space for hopeful potential. Before the tournament, Mona spends money she’s earned herself on a new racket for her youngest sister. It is not so much the shot itself that Gopi is hearing, but that echo, the empty reverb, the lonely response as the ball’s impact gives the striker a split second to retreat to the T, the center of the court, and prepare to counteract her opponent’s responding shot. How does it feel to be nominated for the Booker Prize 2023, and what would winning the prize mean to you - especially as one of several debut novelists on the longlist? Gopi is attracted to Ged’s stammer because “it seemed like you were drifting close to him in the silence”.