Western Lane - Chetna Maroo

 

Chetna Maroo's short debut novel Western Lane is on the 2023 Booker Prize shortlist, and so far it's one of my favorite nominations. Maroo did have numerous short stories published prior to publication of Western Lane and was also the winner of The Paris Review's 2022 Plimpton Prize for Fiction, so she already had a respected track record upon which to judge her work before this novel. 

The story begins just a few days after three British-Indian sisters living in Scotland have lost their mother. Gopi, the novel's narrator, is eleven, Khush is thirteen, and Mona fifteen. On the advice of the girls' aunt that what they need now is exercise and discipline, their rather bewildered father triples down on the time they have been spending on squash and badminton. And for a time, as the girls and their father work their way through individual grief, the idea seems to be working well.

But then as the two older sisters begin to lose their interest in squash just as Gopi begins to excel in the sport, everything begins to change for the family. Mona starts to resent her father for not more actively discouraging the sudden interest that other women begin to show in him, and Gopi begins to distance herself from the rest of the family while growing closer to the boy she practices with at Western Lane. All the while the girls' father seems unable even to avoid his own self-destruction, much less that of his daughters. 

This coming-of-age novel about three sisters forced to deal with devastating grief that their only remaining parent is ill equipped to help them work through is certainly a touching one. But, as evidenced below, what makes this such brilliant storytelling is how Maroo uses the sport of squash as a stand-in for the very mindset of Gopi, her siblings, and their father. 

"In the court, your mind is not only on the shot you're about to play and the shot with which your opponent might reply, but on the shots that will follow two, three, four moves ahead...This is how you choose which way to go. Though your mind is following several paths at once, it's not a splitting but an expansion forwards and backwards at the same time, and it happens so quickly that it feels like instinct. Sometimes, you don't even know you are thinking."

 Too, Gopi's favorite squash practice technique is one called "ghosting," in which the player imagines a series of shots while going through the physical motions of making them without actually using a ball. The same could be said for the way that the girls and their father move through the days that follow their tragic loss. At first I wondered why Maroo chose to make squash such a huge part of Western Lane; now I can't imagine her story being better told any other way. 

Chetna Maroo jacket photo