Western lane - chetna maroo

A taut, enthralling first novel about grief, sisterhood, and a young athletes struggle to transcend herself.

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 thirteen-year-old boy with his own formidable talent.

She is with the players who have come before her.

She is in awe.

An indelible coming-of-age story, Chetna Maroos first novel captures the ordinary and annihilates it with beauty.

Western Lane is a valentine to innocence, to the closeness of sisterhood, to the strange ways we come to know ourselves and each other.