From Squash Magazine
Western Lane
By Chetna Maroo
(Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2023)
by James Zug
Chetna Maroo’s debut novel—short and tight, at 150-pages it is really a novella—is set in the 1980s in Luton, a town north of London, and revolves around a Gujarati Indian immigrant family. The mother has just died, and the father gives his three adolescent daughters squash as an outlet or escape for their grief.
The youngest of the daughters, Gopi, takes to the game and her outings at their slightly rundown local club, called Western Lane, turn into daily training sessions that last for three or four hours. The narrative clings to a cliched trope: an upcoming junior tournament where Gopi predictably triumphs.
Despite the formulaic story, …
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