Week Eight: Western Lane
AUG. 2, 2023 • CAMP TOB WEEK EIGHT
Western Lane
second half discussion
This week at Camp ToB 2023 we’re concluding our second book of the month, which also wraps up our July vibe, “Let’s go abroad (with three lone girls).”
Here to take us through the end of Chetna Maroo’s Western Lane is Activity Leader Kay (aka the Commentariat’s @RidgewayGirl). Take it away, Kay!
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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 13-year-old boy with his own formidable talent. She is with the players who have come before her. She is in awe.
This has been excerpted from the publisher’s summary and edited for length.
Kay: I hope everyone had time to read the second half of Western Lane and has opinions about i.
First, let’s consider the character whose absence is constantly present in this novel. “While Ma was alive, whenever we did something we weren’t supposed to, our relatives would bring Ma’s feelings into it, as if she were easy to hurt. But she wasn’t. It didn’t matter now. Now she was gone, our capacity to hurt her seemed infinite.” This novel both skirts around grief and centers it. It’s also notable that while the relatives are evoked often, it’s in a Pakistani man, Maqsud, and Ged and his mother are the people who are actually there for the family.
When Pa tells Ged’s mother that his girls are eating him alive, what did you think of that and of Gopi’s reaction?
When Gopi called Uncle Pavan, did she realize what the end result would be? How did she think things would play out?
The final pages are triumphant but bittersweet. Does Gopi still need squash or will she be content to leave it behind?
And this was the second ToB book this year that mentioned the Oregon Trail. Has anyone encountered it elsewhere in their reading?
The Booker Prize longlist went out early Tuesday morning and Western Lane is on the list. Do you think it has a chance of making the shortlist?
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