Reading guide: Western Lane by Chetna Maroo

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 13-year-old boy with his own formidable talent. She is with the players who have come before her. She is in awe. 

Chetna Maroo was born in Kenya and lives in London. Her stories have appeared in anthologies and have been published in the Paris Review, the Stinging Fly and the Dublin Review.

She was the recipient of the 2022 Plimpton Prize for Fiction, awarded annually since 1993 by the Paris Review to celebrate an outstanding piece of fiction by an emerging writer published in the magazine during the preceding year. Before becoming a full-time writer, she worked as an accountant. Western Lane, which is shorlisted for the Booker Prize 2023, is her first novel. 

The story is told from the first-person perspective of Gopi, the youngest of three daughters in a family dealing with the loss of their mother. Gopi’s narration is sparse, befitting a storyteller who is coming of age. Why do you think the author chose to tell the story from the perspective of an 11-year-old child - and how does it benefit the novel? 

Western Lane is set in the 1980s London suburbs, where Gopi and her family are British-Indian immigrants. How insightful a portrayal did you find the depiction of immigration? What cultural struggles do you think they faced during this time?

After the death of the family’s mother, the children and Pa channel their grief, unusually, into squash. What is it about this sport, and the act of this game in particular that allows them to process their mother’s death? Without this, how might they have dealt with the tragedy?

‘The effort to speak made him wince,’ says Gopi at one point, of her Pa. (Page 97). The book adheres to a show, don’t tell, philosophy, with much of the novel concerned with what resides in the silent spaces. Discuss how the prose, and the unsaid, serve the story, and whether you found it affecting. 

‘She began to manage everything in the house, but she sought Pa’s opinions on things and listened to what he said. […] She was attentive to us, even kind. Sometimes we could feel the strain in her, the mental and physical burden of being something she was not.’ (Page 69). Eldest sister, Mona, begins to adopt a maternal role after their mother’s death. Discuss the consequences of this for her - is it fair to say she is fulfilling a cultural expectation? Is she a victim of patriarchy - or both? 

Though not explicit, the author alludes to darker experiences within the girl’s everyday lives. ‘It was amazing to us that none of the children nearby went in there. We were the only ones. No one spat on us from a height or told us to go home. No one ran us out of there. No one came near.’ (Page 20). ‘In front of the open section of the fort was a grass-covered hill as tall as our house […] Opposite, the main road with the bus stop and the underpass we avoided.’ (Page 21). Discuss these statements and other sentiments in the book, with regards to racism and anti-immigration rhetoric in the U.K. 

‘Pa ran a thumb around the silver frame. After a long time, he put my racket on the table between us. ‘It is very nice,’ he said. ‘You did well.’ He said this, but with his eyes and his body – his shoulders, his throat, the white bones visible under his skin – he was telling us that in one day we had exposed him, left him behind, left him wide open to whatever was coming for Him.’ (Page 76). In this passage, Gopi and her sisters have travelled to London to buy a new squash racquet. What is the subtext here - why has this simple purchase left Pa ‘exposed’? 

‘We heard Susilaben whisper in the hallway, ‘Does Ranjan know?’ She was talking about Ged’s mother. ‘Know what, Auntie?’ Mona said, and Susilaben made a jumbled reply and left.’ (Page 8). After their mother’s death, the Gujarati community around the family become watchful. They provide instruction for the family, which is often unwanted. What cultural expectations are the family balancing, and perhaps, disregarding?

‘The book culminates in the squash tournament Gopi has been working toward through the novel. Discuss Gopi’s journey as a player. How invested in the sport was she personally, versus how much of it was her father’s drive?

‘I knew he was going to tell me it was up to me, and I knew that if I said yes, then we would be close again. But I was already answering him.’ (Page 120). Gopi’s father suggests she moves to Edinburgh to live with her aunt and uncle, to which Mona agrees. To what extent do you think she was happy to go?

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