Maroo, Chetna. Western Lane. Knopf Canada, Toronto, 2023. 09/23.

This short novel is about Gopi, a young East Indian girl growing up in England and excelling at the sport of squash. It’s one of five on the 2023 Booker shortlist. As I write this I’ve read three and I’m halfway through a fourth. This is one of the successful ones but I see I have no notes, neither in Kindle or on paper, so this review will be brief.

There are three sisters, Gopi is the youngest. Their mum is fairly recently deceased and the dad is grieving and also strapped for cash. His brother is in a childless marriage and the wife has traditional ideas about raising the girls that don’t always agree with those of their father. He wants to give them something to be absorbed in and to work at and all of them start playing squash (at a club called Western Lane) the dad having played quite well. Gopi who is in her early teens out-excels her sisters, meets and develops her game with a same-aged young guy, and enters a serious regional tournament resulting in high-class competitive excitement.

The themes of immigration, cultural issues, coming-of-age, achieving excellence, single parenthood, spiritual presence, non-verbal communication and grief are handled with sensitivity and I’d say maturity.  I felt the troubles and emotions of the characters and that interest transcended cultures, race, and ages. The father’s quiet struggle was particularly clear, and his decisions raising his daughters were ambiguous and complicated. As Gopi’s sense of how to win at squash develops, so does her instinctive understanding of what’s going on with the people around her. This parallel gives the story depth: the hard physical moves of the sport coexist unexpectedly with the much subtler relationship issues.

For the athletic, love interest, and family dynamic content here there isn’t much literary showmanship on the part of the author. She just tells her story gently and convincingly.

9.2/9.1