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  • Western Lane

  • By: Chetna Maroo
  • Narrated by: Maya Saroya
  • Length: 4 hrs and 21 mins
  • 3.7 out of 5 stars (3 ratings)

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Western Lane

By: Chetna Maroo
Narrated by: Maya Saroya
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Publisher's Summary

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2023. The International Bestseller.
Longlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award 2023.

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 unforgettable coming-of-age story, Chetna Maroo’s first novel is a moving exploration of the closeness of sisterhood, the immigrant experience, and the collective overcoming of grief.
©2023 Chetna Maroo (P)2023 Macmillan Publishers International Limited
Coming of Age Family Life Literary Fiction
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Critic Reviews

'Listeners will connect with this story of loss, cultural struggle, and the many stages of grief. Soroya pulls us closer to Gopi's truncated world as playing squash comes to replace the gaping losses in her life.' - AudioFile

'Few novelists write this simply and richly. With this gorgeous debut, Maroo blows most of the competition off the court.’ - The Times

'Feels like the work of a writer who knows what they want to do, and who has the rare ability to do it.' - The Guardian

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Profile Image for Brianne Cuthbert

Moving, gentle and simple story about squash and love

Beautifully narrated and wonderfully written. Western Lane is a coming of age and a story of love and duty. It is wonderful to read a writer so confident to stop the story where it needed to end.

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In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.