Western Lane by Chetna Maroo at Tashan in Bedford

THE BOOK
Set on the squash courts of south London, Western Lane follows eleven-year-old Gopi, the quiet youngest of three sisters, as she trains relentlessly under the watchful eye of her father. In the wake of their mother’s death, the family’s grief is never spoken aloud, but it shapes everything - the routines, the silences, the fierce discipline of the game. As Gopi’s talent sharpens, so do the pressures placed upon her, and the novel gently explores how love, loss, and ambition coexist within a family learning how to endure. Spare, intimate, and deeply moving, Western Lane is a meditation on childhood, control, and the ways we survive what we cannot name.

THE AUTHOR
Chetna Maroo is a British writer. Western Lane is her debut novel shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Her writing is known for its restraint, emotional precision, and attention to interior lives shaped by migration, family bonds, and unspoken grief.