Western Lane: Shortlisted For The Booker Prize 2023

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I usually try to get each sentence and paragraph sounding right before I go on, reading and editing from the beginning of the story. I had the feeling that spoken language had become a wall for the girls, an obstacle to knowing and being known.

Before the tournament, Mona spends money she’s earned herself on a new racket for her youngest sister. The novel follows Gopi, an 11-year-old girl who has been playing squash since she could first grasp a racket.Recently a friend asked me if the book has something of the detective story about it, with Gopi trying to find her way, piecing together the clues of small gestures, actions and fragments of overheard conversations; she has little to go on and since she’s dealing with the mysteries of loss, there are no answers for her. I had never considered how much of the game unfolds in that hollow pop, or how much of my profession depended on that lonely sound. Interestingly, before embarking on her writing career, Chetna Maroo had worked as an accountant, a lesser-known facet of her professional journey. It is not so much the shot itself that Gopi is hearing, but that echo, the empty reverb, the lonely response as the ball’s impact gives the striker a split second to retreat to the T, the center of the court, and prepare to counteract her opponent’s responding shot.

Soon Pa is neglecting his job as an electrician and turning a blind eye to his family’s financial troubles, not to mention their emotional ones. Instead, she’s listening to the sound of the ball hitting the wall on the adjacent court, “a quick, low pistol-shot of a sound, with a close echo. The sisters have always spoken Gujarati, their mother tongue, but not well enough to converse easily with their own mother, and so when she was alive the girls had learned to read her body and to communicate by being physical in her presence. She loves listening to the “sound from the next court of a ball hit clean and hard”, which has an echo “louder than the shot itself”. Booklist also reviewed the novel, [9] as well the audiobook, noting that "London actor [Maya] Saroya is a gentle, measured cipher, moving seamlessly between the crisper British English of the sisters and their contemporaries and the more lyrical South Asian accents of the older generation.

This challenge was particularly pronounced when she had to switch between the perspective of the child and the retrospective narrator. To navigate the sport’s punishing constraints, Gopi learns, you “have to find the shots and make the space you need”. Taking a break and immersing herself in various readings ultimately led to a significant breakthrough. What drove you to invest so much editorial energy in this unspoken communication between characters?

With Pa, she spends hours “ghosting”, which means playing with something crucial missing – the ball – in a practice that seems more significant “than a rehearsal or drill”. They stay up late to watch the same video of the great Pakistani champion Jahangir Khan over and over again. Her literary accomplishments also include being honored with the 2022 Plimpton Prize for Fiction, a prestigious recognition bestowed by the Paris Review to acknowledge exceptional works of fiction published in the magazine during the preceding year. It’s humbling to see Western Lane amongst all the books that have been longlisted in the history of the prize. Gopi is attracted to Ged’s stammer because “it seemed like you were drifting close to him in the silence”.Gopi cares how her feet fall on the court, the curve of her arm through the air, how close she can keep to the “T”. Soon Gopi discovers a talent that draws the attention of Ged, the son of the club’s white manager, who becomes her training partner; and Maqsud, a Pakistani businessman and avid squash player who convinces Pa to enter his daughter into a tournament.