Western Lane

　　2023布克獎決選
 
　　「Chetna Maroo這本出道之作，賽場上再無對手。」－《時代雜誌》
 
　　Gopi喪母那一年，她才11歲。為了應對這份悲痛和哀傷，Gopi的某位親戚建議父親必須找點事讓年幼的女兒們做，於是Gopi父親便將三名都才十來多歲的女兒帶至住家附近的體育中心打壁球。雖然Gopi那年真的還小，才剛能拿起球拍，卻已經充分展現了她在壁球這項競技上的天份，她成為了三姊妹中唯一留在球場上奮鬥的人。因此父親也更加嚴格地訓練她，而Gopi與姊妹們的距離越來越遠，她的生活軌跡漸漸與規律的壁球軌跡重疊：發球、截擊、發球、擊球，還有咚咚咚，迴盪不斷的打球聲。
 
　　但球場上的她，並不孤單，她有父親在側，還有對手－13歲的Ged。藉由永遠充滿活力和生命力的壁球運動，以傾聽自己喪親之痛的壓力和掙扎。作者利用優美而有韻律的文筆，讓讀者慢慢地陪著Gopi打完這場療傷的球賽。(文／博客來外文館)

Shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize
Longlisted for the 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Guardian, NPR, and Kirkus

A taut, enthralling first novel about grief, sisterhood, and a young athlete’s struggle to transcend herself.

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 indelible coming-of-age story, Chetna Maroo’s first novel captures the ordinary and annihilates it with beauty. Western Lane is a valentine to innocence, to the closeness of sisterhood, to the strange ways we come to know ourselves and each other.

Chetna Maroo lives in London. Her stories have been published in the Paris Review, the Stinging Fly and the Dublin Review and she was the recipient of the 2022 Plimpton Prize for Fiction.