Western Lane
Shortlisted For The Booker Prize 2023
By Chetna Maroo
Harry Hartog's review
Western Lane is a tender portrayal of the way grief can rend us, and then slowly allow us to grow into a new shape in its wake. This is a novel about sisterhood, a coming-of-age story about balancing egos and expectations, and also, there’s a lot of sport - I never expected to find myself deeply invested in a book about squash, of all things, but here we are. This is an incredibly quiet novel that might appeal to fans of Claire Keegan and other writers that deftly capture the mundanity of love and loss. - Georgia, Harry Hartog Warringah
Description
'WOW. Western Lane is glorious. You'll want to read it over and over again.' - Aravind Adiga, author of The White Tiger
A taut, enthralling first novel about grief, sisterhood, and a young athlete's struggle to transcend herself.
Eleven-year-old Gopi has been playing squash since she was old enough to hold a racket. When her mother dies, her father enlists her in a quietly brutal training regimen, and the game becomes her world. Slowly, she grows apart from her sisters. Her life is reduced to the sport, guided by its rhythms: the serve, the volley, the drive, the shot and its echo.
But on the court, she is not alone. She is with her pa. She is with Ged, a thirteen-year-old boy with his own formidable talent. She is with the players who have come before her. She is in awe.
An indelible coming-of-age story, Chetna Maroo's first novel captures the ordinary and annihilates it with beauty. Western Lane is a valentine to innocence, to the closeness of sisterhood, to the strange ways we come to know ourselves and each other.
LONG-LISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2023
- ISBN:
- 9781035041879
- Format:
- Paperback / softback
- Pages:
- 176
- Published:
- Publisher:
- Pan Macmillan
- Imprint:
- Picador