Western Lane by Chetna Maroo

This book is long listed for the 2023 Booker Prize, and it fits that bill well. It is a debut novel and the prize committee has a track record of including first time authors amongst those it recognizes. It deals with intense truths about life in a not usual and often heart rending ways. The book begins a few days after 11-year-old Gopi’s mother’s funeral, which leaves Gopi and her two older sisters in the care of their father. Gopi practices squash every day at Western Lane, a sports center just outside London to such an intense degree that it is inescapably about coping, grief, and loss--for both she and her father. The book ends with her playing the final of the Durham and Cleveland squash tournament. The arc is picture perfect: tragedy, sporting trial, potential triumph. The tension is heightened by squash-obsessed, emotionally uncommunicative Pa; fearful Aunt Ranjan is the obstacle that stands in Gopi’s way. There is a love interest, Ged, whose mother intervenes at all the wrong moments--as mothers are prone to do. The underlying emotional truths are raw and well told.