Western Lane: Shortlisted For The Booker Prize 2023

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Plot-wise, too, this Booker Prize-longlisted debut is uncomplicated. A Gujarati immigrant family living in 1980s Britain silently struggles to cope with the death of their Ma, with squash filling those holes. The sport, which takes over the world of Gopi and her emotionally suffocated Pa, provides respite and distraction: each day Gopi practises at Western Lane, a sporting centre outside London, losing herself in her serves and becoming drawn to fellow player, 13-year-old Ged. The narrative alternates between past and present, court and home; while the court provides structure, it’s at home that Gopi, our narrator, observes the crumbling of her family, through subtle details from headaches to whispered conversations.

Maroo's storytelling is very matter-of-fact and well-told but it didn't rise to a level of quotable literary passages that one would expect and look for in a Booker nominee. It does avoid pre-teen or teenage angst for the most part, so it definitely rises above being a simple YA tale. But it just didn't ignite any spark or passion for me. It all leads up to a final junior championship match and then it's over. Before I get to the review proper, a mini-rant! To wit: when the Booker longlist was announced, wags referred to it as the 'Year of the Pauls', since three of the authors have that first name. But I will recall this as the 'Year of Dead Mothers' since now three of the five books I've read revolve around such - and the sixth book that I've just started begins with the death of yet ANOTHER mother! What gives? Combining the precision and the efficiency of an athlete with the mysteries of childhood loss and memory, Western Lane is a novel in which we linger on every breathing line and relish every close observation. What an exceptionally talented writer Chetna Maroo is!”The tone is subtle and the prose is deceptive; it may be easy to write it off as plain or straightforward, but there is an emotional depth to her writing that comes through immensely. I felt so deeply for Gopi and her family, especially Pa who is lost at sea without his wife, a confidante and supporter of their family. A poignant illustration of the power of sports to help a family deal with grief—and each other—as they gradually make their way out of the darkness . . . [Maroo] is a marvelous and restrained storyteller.” Maroo is deeply in tune with the sensory experiences of being on the court, from the sound of a ball ricocheting off the wall of an adjacent court to the “soft throbbing” through a player’s body when playing and hitting well . . . The lingering power of Maroo’s novel is the way she depicts the possibility that on the court, there is the chance to find some modicum of grace, however temporary. Yes, I did. In fact, I wrote a lot, most of which I burned before I left boarding school. Somebody I went to school with wrote me a letter from Canada the other day saying she remembers me reading aloud a whole adventure story I was writing, which I also remember writing. It was a story about some disguised male figure getting into this girls’ boarding school. I had this terrible need for male figures.

Klaces, Caleb (2023-04-26). "Western Lane by Chetna Maroo review – a tender debut". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 2023-09-23. There is nothing hurried about squash. Watch Jahangir Khan between shots and it is as if he’s doing nothing. Maroo achieves something of this almost stillness, rhythmic quality and precision in her prose. Western Lane has a dreamy intensity . . . Gopi is steadily finding out what she can make of her feelings, of her life, of the people she meets and the heights she might aspire to." I write at my desk at home. To my left is a wardrobe, to my right above my desk the exhibition poster from the Dulwich Picture Gallery’s Tove Jansson retrospective, showing Moomintroll standing in an open window looking out into the dark.It wasn’t yet midday and it was already too warm for Uncle Pavan. His face was glowing and pink as anything. He put a hand on the table, tapped his four fingers on the cloth, all at once, and then moved his hand to his thigh. He needed a smoke. He glanced at Pa and clasped his hands in his lap, ready to talk. Khush had poured Uncle Pavan a glass of water, and seeing he was ready she placed it on the table in front of him and sat down to hear what he had to say. Uncle Pavan gave her a grateful look and began. LONDON: London-based Indian-origin author Chetna Maroo's debut novel 'Western Lane' is among 13 books to make the cut for the 2023 Booker Prize longlist revealed on Tuesday. An unforgettable coming-of-age story, Chetna Maroo’s first novel is a moving exploration of the closeness of sisterhood, the immigrant experience, and the collective overcoming of grief. Oma wanted to say something more to Geeta about the wedding, because she knew there would be no opportunity when she returned home. The house would be filled with aunties and cousins from Delhi and Mombasa and then there would be the wedding itself, and then Geeta would be gone. It’s feels wonderful. It’s an honour. It’s humbling to see Western Lane amongst all the books that have been longlisted in the history of the prize. I’m still taking that in.

That was at the beginning of autumn. The weather had turned from unseasonably dry and warm to humid. The air was oppressive and the streets smelled of decomposing food. In this heat, a number of days after Ma’s funeral, we had driven four hundred miles to Edinburgh to have a meal at our aunt’s home to mark the end of our mourning period, and Aunt Ranjan told Pa we were wild.

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Maroo was originally employed as an accountant before devoting herself to writing full time. [1] [2] When the wedding had first been announced, Duniya had cried and, later, demanded, “Why marry when you don’t want to?” Geeta had looked unhappy at the question. She’d been sitting on Oma’s bed with Oma’s new walking boots in her lap, threading the laces in, though Oma could have done it herself. “I do want to,” Geeta had replied, and Duniya went and sat next to her and said, “Okay.” Geeta kept lacing. Then she put one boot down on the carpet and said, “You’ll understand when it’s your turn.” Rakhi shot Duniya the same glance she used when they were cross-examining their parents, but Duniya refused to meet it, and since it was impossible for the sisters to imagine themselves at twenty-two without a vague, unsettling sense of their own absence, they each turned away and occupied themselves with other thoughts.