3.5 Quiet and enojyable. Loved to see iconic Pakistani squash players mentioned in there. But the novel was almost too pared back at times for me, though not impossible to parse what was going unsaid, I felt that I didn't have enough of an insight into these characters to confidently understand the intention behind a glance or strange interaction, though I geuss I managed to do it all the same so.

I don't think I would personally recommend that anyone buy this book. I don't think it has enough to make it worth the purchase.

the subtlety that is at work in western lane is ultimately this novella's undoing as everything feels very at a remove. which can work sometimes, especially when exploring themes like grief, but here it just felt kind of shallow.

A slow paced quiet novel about a father and his daughters dealing with the grief of losing their mother. Their father is crippled with grief and cannot function normally as the family struggle finding comfort in his childhood sport squash. Mona the eldest tries to steer the family through their grief and the younger daughters connect with their father through the sport with Gopi showing great promise and becomes Gopi's talent becomes her father's focus. All the unspoken feelings finally rise to the surface and lead to a dramatic and heart breaking change in the family dynamic

Gopi is eleven when her mother dies, her sisters Mona and Kushi fifteen and thirteen. Their father seems poleaxed by loss, incapable of running the house or raising his three daughters. Instead, he turns to his boyhood sport taking them off to Western Lane squash courts where they train intensively. When Gopi shows promise, he focuses his attention on her. Mona has been carrying the family, angry at her father’s inability to get a grip on everyday life, then angry again when he begins to talk to the mother of another squash player. Ged and Gopi show real talent, playing against each other at her father’s request, then finding a connection off the court. As they prepare for a tournament, the pressure cooker of emotions explodes and Gopi decides to take action.

So much is unexpressed in this family left rudderless by loss. Their father’s collapse is poignantly described but it's Gopi’s confusion and puzzlement which is the most touching, looking to her older sisters for interpretation of his behaviour while struggling with her own emotions, given to sudden, uncontrollable outbursts of grief. The ending is suitably ambivalent - we’re left not knowing what the future will hold for Gopi or for her friendship with Ged. Like so much in this beautifully understated novel, much is left unsaid, echoing the silence of the father of this family who by the end of the novel may have found a way to cope with their loss.

Enjoyable enough. Too much detail about the squash playing! Despite this, I still connected with the characters and cared about how the events would unfold.

Western Lane is a quiet novel about a family--three sisters and a father--in the wake of grief. The issue here is that it is so quiet as to feel muted--and that's really the beginning and the end of why I didn't find this novel to be particularly memorable, or even moving. Theoretically, the elements of its story should work for me: I love stories about families, especially ones that focus on the dynamics between a small group characters. But the way this novel is written made it so difficult for me to connect with its story. The general impression I get from Western Lane is that it was aiming for subtlety and nuance but instead overcorrected and tamped down its entire narrative: that is, rather than subtle, the writing just felt flat, one-note. I wanted more from this story, because there were glimmers here and there of genuinely interesting or compelling moments. But it was like the narrative kept refusing to give me even the faintest bit more: more feeling, more introspection, just...more. I understand that this tamping-down is a function of the characters' grief--specifically the narrator, Gopi's, grief--but I just don't think the way it was done here served the story or its characters well.

There are quiet novels and then there are boring novels, and I hate to say it, but I feel like Western Lane was more of the latter than the former for me. I've only just finished it, and I've pretty much forgotten everything about it.

Thank you to Picador for providing me with an eARC of this via NetGalley!

Rounding up to three stars.

I wonder if this book was too short for me.
That I felt I didn't get enough time to get to know the characters properly.
A look at grief,how we react to it, and how it effects our relationships.
It's also about family.
About things that drive us onwards.
For me it was an OK read,but I fear it won't be a memorable one.

Western Lane by Chetna Maroo is a coming of age novel about grief, the work that goes into being an athlete, family relationships.