Week Seven: Western Lane

JULY 26, 2023 • CAMP TOB WEEK SEVEN

Western Lane

first half discussion

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Hello! It’s nearly the end of July, which means we’re halfway through July at Camp ToB, where time is stored inside a haunted cabin on the southern ridge.

This week—or whatever it’s called around here!—we continue the vibe of “Let’s go abroad (with three lone girls)” with our discussion on the first half of Western Lane by Chetna Maroo.

Now here’s Activity Leader Kay (aka @RidgewayGirl in the Commentariat) to guide our journey through Western Lane!

• View synopsis

  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.

Hi, Kay, and welcome to Camp! Please introduce yourself, and stay at least 45 feet away from the cabin on the southern ridge.

Kay: Thank you! I moved to the absolute middle of the Mid-West, a small university city in the center of Illinois called Bloomington, the self-styled “hub of the corn belt,” which means that the local farmer’s market is insanely good and that people have opinions about the weather that are largely agriculture-based.

I didn’t discover the ToB until 2015, and I didn’t start commenting until later. At least 2015 was the first year I took the shortlist and read several books I would not have read otherwise. Some were wonderful surprises. I was hooked.

I am, at heart, a literary fiction girl, with a fondness for short stories and books from small publishers, which tend to be weird and inventive and interesting.

As for Western Lane:

So here’s the shortest novel in our summer reading and just in case a few of you didn’t stop at the end of chapter four, try not to discuss anything that happens after the girls go on their outing to buy Gopi a new racket.

1. This novel is full of understated emotions and the members of this family don’t discuss their feelings with each other. How much of this is due to our only viewing the family through the eyes of an 11-year-old girl and how much is this family just not one that communicates well? And what do you think of how this novel has addressed the aftermath of their mother’s death?

2. Would this novel be better or worse had the author chosen to write from the viewpoints of Khush and Mona? We see Mona changing from a girl angry at change to one who takes responsibility for the family’s welfare on her own shoulders. The sisters are portrayed as kind to each other and fairly harmonious. Is this down to Gopi being the youngest?

3. And then there’s squash. As a non-sports person who knows little about this one, I enjoyed even the parts describing the matches Gopi watches over and over again with her father. How did the rest of you feel? Are there any squash players out there in the Commentariat? And what is the importance of the Durham and Cleveland competition to this little family?

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