First Impression Friday will be a meme where you talk about a book that you JUST STARTED! Maybe you’re only a chapter or two in, maybe a little farther. Based on this sampling of your current read, give a few impressions and predict what you’ll think by the end.

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 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.

Happy Friday everyone! Another work week is done! Woah, today is also the first Friday of the year. I hope that the first work week of the year has been great for everyone. I know, the majority of us is still feeling sluggish after the holiday season. This percentage of the population – to which I belong – must shrug off the holiday blues and kick the ground running. I hope everyone is doing the same: kicking the ground running toward our goals for this year. I hope that 2024 will be a year brimming with good news and blessings for everyone. I hope that everyone hits their target this year. More importantly, I hope everyone will be healthy, in body, mind, and spirit, during the rest of the year and in the coming year.

In terms of reading, 2023 has been a record-breaking year. To date, it is my most prolific reading year. I completed 130 books last year, breaking the record of 103 books I set in 2022. This also means that I read 100 books in a year for two consecutive years. Interestingly, I was not expecting to replicate the feat I achieved in 2022 but lo and behold, I did and even went beyond it. I am hoping that I will build on the momentum I sustained in the past two years and that 2024 will be another record-breaking, if not prolific reading year. Apart from this, I read my 1,000th (James Joyce’s Ulysses) and my 1,100th (Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain) novel over the year. I have also read more books originally written in other languages compared to previous years.

For this First Impression Friday update, I am featuring Chetna Maroo’s Western Lane. Before 2023, I had not heard of Maroo nor had I come across any of her works; Western Lane is her debut novel. Interestingly, she worked in my field before. She was an accountant before shifting to a full-time writing career. Maybe I ought to emulate her? Just kidding. Anyway, it was through the Booker Prize that I first heard of the British Indian writer. Her debut novel made it to the longlist, and eventually the shortlist. Unfortunately, she missed out on the Prize which was won by Irish writer Paul Lynch. This, however, has not held me back from wanting to read the book and the other longlisted books.

Western Lane is the second book from the 2023 Booker Prize shortlist and the third from the longlist that I read. Set in 1980s London, the novel commences when the novel’s primary narrator, Gopi, is eleven years old. She was the youngest of three daughters; Mona and Khush were her older sisters. The story opened a few days after the funeral of their mother; this was a seminal point in the young life of Gopi. Her mother’s untimely demise left her and her sisters under the care of their father. The titular Western Lane is a sports center in suburban London. It is where Gopi learned how to play squash and badminton. She and her sisters were trained to play these racket games as soon as they were able to hold the implements.

Their father, still reeling from the death of her life partner, was clueless on how to proceed with living. With the prodding of her sister – he did not much as he let life dictate his actions – he made his daughters undergo an intense training regimen at Western Lane. From what I can surmise, the sisters trained day in, and day out. However, it was palpable that the sisters varied in skill. Gopi was heads and shoulders above her older sisters. Gopi had a natural talent for squash. I have just started reading the book and just finished the first chapter. Nevertheless, the opening chapter, without much preamble, immediately sets the tone for the story.

I guess it is a no-brainer that the story is a coming-of-age tale, considering the age of the main character and the life-changing event that led to the unraveling of her young life. The integration of sports into the story piques my curiosity. How will Maroo weave these two threads together? Will Gopi find value in squash? Sports do teach us a lot of lessons. I am also interested to see how Maroo will build the story, especially since it is rather thin. Size, I have learned, can be deceptive as even the thinnest of books can, at times, hold some of the most filling stories. This is something I hope for Western Lane.

Further, I want to see Maroo’s take on a coming-of-age story. Will she bring something new to the table? I sure hope so. How about you fellow reader? What book or books are you taking with you for the weekend? I hope you get to enjoy them. Again, happy weekend everyone!