Uploaded August 2023 | Updated September 2026, 6 days ago
Chetna Maroo's 'Western Lane' is small, quiet, and likeable. Shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize.
6/10
Western Lane: 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 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.
Goodreads: goodreads.com/user/show/61199102
Letterboxd: letterboxd.com/TheDiscoKing
Thanks for watching, and remember: squash is boring.
#bookerprize #bookerprize2023 #booktube #bookreview #westernlane
Chetna Maroo's 'Western Lane' is small, quiet, and likeable. Shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize.
6/10
Western Lane: 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 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.
Goodreads: goodreads.com/user/show/61199102
Letterboxd: letterboxd.com/TheDiscoKing
Thanks for watching, and remember: squash is boring.
#bookerprize #bookerprize2023 #booktube #bookreview #westernlane
