A beautifully told story of a family struggling to come to terms with the grief of the loss of their wife and mother.

Gopi is eleven when her Ma dies, her sisters, Khush, thirteen and Mona, fifteen. Their father is uncertain of how to grieve the loss of his wife,and how to parent his children. Uncle Parvan and Aunt Ranjan visit , and offer to take one of the children. Their father decides that squash will be a way for the family to cope, and Gopi excels at this. Pa ( who remains unnamed throughout the book) becomes withdrawn, doesn't work and begins a relationship with a white woman, Linda.

This is a quiet, subtle , and very moving story.

Page 101 " I didn't know , then, that it was to the limping creature behind Pa's eyes that I should have been paying attention. Instead, I was thinking of the presence whose hold on Pa was slipping away, and the feeling that if it did, then our living room and our house and Western Lane and everything we knew would go with it."

4 stars. ( )

Squash Dreams
Review of the Dreamscape Media LLC CD-audiobook (February 7, 2023) narrated by Maya Saroya of the Farrar, Straus & Giroux hardcover original (February 7, 2023).

Longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize.

[2.5]
It was again a chance thing that led me to "read" the audiobook edition of another longlisted 2023 Booker nominee, after listening to a narration of Sebastian Barry's Old God's Time. While looking for the half-dozen or so Booker nominees currently available in Canada at the library, I found that a CD-audio edition was available immediately, as opposed to joining the long list of hold requests for a hardcopy. I fortunately still have a CD-player available (even in the car), and I suppose many do not.

Western Lane is a straightforward coming-of-age story, unlike Barry's stream-of-consciousness novel. I didn't need to access an e-book to assist in following along. The main character is 11-year-old Gopi, the youngest of 3 daughters in a South Asian UK family whose mother has recently passed. In his efforts to keep the girls occupied, the father encourages their squash court activities at a local sports centre named Western Lane. As further inspiration, they watch the videotaped matches of Jahangir Khan, widely acknowledged as the greatest squash player to have ever played the game, with an world-record setting 555-match winning streak.

Maroo's storytelling is very matter-of-fact and well-told but it didn't rise to a level of quotable literary passages that one would expect and look for in a Booker nominee. It does avoid pre-teen or teenage angst for the most part, so it definitely rises above being a simple YA tale. But it just didn't ignite any spark or passion for me. It all leads up to a final junior championship match and then it's over.

See illustration at https://static01.nyt.com/images/2023/02/07/books/review/07MAROO/07MAROO-jumbo.jp...
Illustration by Femme ter Haar for the New York Times review of “Western Lane”. Image sourced from the New York Times (link below)

Perhaps I just have too little interest in competition sports, and zero knowledge of squash especially, to fully appreciate this novel. I had the same problem with Aravind Adiga's Selection Day which centred around cricket. Adiga at least saw the humour of cricket being a "false sport", played by only 8 countries in the world. There was little or no humour in Western Lane to lighten the journey for non-aficionados.

Other Reviews
Finding Solace from Grief on the Squash Court by Ivy Pochoda*, New York Times, February 7, 2023.
A Tender Debut by Caleb Klaces, The Guardian, April 23, 2023.

* Reviewer Ivy Pochoda (The Art of Disappearing, Visitation Street, These Women a.o.) was a professional squash player prior to becoming an author.

Trivia and Link
As I previously did not know anything about squash, it was interesting to discover than squash players train with a method called "ghosting" i.e. practicing moves on the court without an actual ball. There are plentiful "ghosting" videos on YouTube, and you can see one here. ( )

I feel like my recent book notes have been ultra critical. This one will be: because I don't know much about the sport of squash. This is a brief novel about sisters, grief for their mom, and squash. It's subtle, quiet, short. I would love to know how much of this book is related to the writer's life. But this book had moments that were wonderful and memorable. Kind of like pieces of a dream. But that means, I fear, they will quickly float away from my memory, like a dream. Not as noteworthy as I would like!

*Book #16/42 I have read of the Morning News Camp ToB ( )

This is a quiet and understated novel about an eleven year old Indian British girl whose mother recently died. Her father is told to find something to occupy her time, and that of her two older sisters and so the usual fun games of squash this family enjoyed becomes a training regimen. Gopi is the only one who shows promise; her oldest sister, Mona, has other concerns, not the least figuring out how to keep the family functioning, and Khush, the middle sister, lacks Gopi's dedication and talent. Squash is the way Gopi and her father communicate, watching famous matches and always training. She also trains with a boy whose mother works at the club where the courts are located, and before long she and the boy are focused on an upcoming tournament.

Most of this novel takes place between the lines, in the brief glimpses we catch of the members of this grieving family. Gopi does her best to do her part, in this case that means training hard and in the uncertainty of a family that has lost its center, squash provides her a refuge. This is a small book, both in scope and page count, but is beautifully told. ( )

I understood what this book was trying to do, a coming of age story using squash as the vehicle. Handling the loss of the parent, coping with losing memories, etc. This small book should have take 1 to 2 days to read but instead I stretched it out to 4 or 5 days. I just couldn’t get into it. ( )