Western Lane - Chetna Maroo

 Shortlisted for this year‘s book a prize, Chetna Maroo’s debut novel, uses the sport of squash as an enduring metaphor for life. Gopi and her sisters lose their mother and the novel  looks at how a family deals with grief alongside trying to live an everyday life. It’s a delicate balance seen through the eyes of the 11 year old Gopi. 

Gopi is a delightful character and displays an intuitive sensitivity to those around her as she tries to make sense of life seeing the squash court as her panacea for her grief. There is innocence and there’s subtle humor. The other characters are also well drawn, and it’s easy to relate to them. The relationship between Gopi and her two sisters is beautifully explored and we feel so much for her father losing his wife and knowing he has to be both mother and father to his girls. Family interventions also provide some interestng characterizations as well for some interesting considerations.

The book is a fine example of how an author can take aspects of an everyday life without anything sensational happening and renders it into a meaningful and delicate exploration of growing up and grieving. It’s an even, accessible narrative. The writing is deceptive. Sometimes it’s only when you go back and reread and think again about what you’ve just read that you realize the depth of perception this author possesses.

As someone who has experienced grief all too often these days I found this sentiment expressed, regarding competitive squash, so metaphorically pertinent to grief.

‘You are supposed to find your own way out… No one can help you.’

I also thought it was one of those novels, like Elizabeth Lowry’s The Chosen, where the silences in between words, express as much as the words themselves.

Sometimes described as a family drama it’s more a slowly executed unraveling of layers like the skins of an onion, peeled away.

Religion makes its mark in the book too, where Gopi’s family are Jain and there comes across a degree of ethnic and social division but it all seems that this is part of Gopi’s growing up, her developing as we see how she deals with everything.