This year I finally discovered audiobooks. Yeah, I’m decades late to the game, but I got here okay?!

Until recently I thought audiobooks were cheating, but I now see them as a different reading experience. Nothing wrong with mixing it up!

I tend to listen to audiobooks while I’m walking around town doing errands. Or if it’s the right book, I tune in while Zwifting on the trainer.

I’ve had mixed results with audiobooks. Some books set up better as a listening experience, while others read better off the page. Certain narrators are easier than others for me to follow.

Earlier this year I listened to Western Lane by Chetna Maroo, and narrated by Maya Soroya. This gorgeous coming-of age story about a British Indian girl named Gopi and her family as they navigate the loss of their mother unspooled in my ears as I meandered through the city.

After being so carried away by this book, I peeked into the review universe to check out other readers’ opinions. I was surprised by the number people who wrote that the book didn’t work for them because they didn’t like, understand, or play squash.

“This book is not about squash, people!” I wanted to shout. No! While squash is the primary vehicle for this story, Western Lane is not about squash.

This relatively slim novel delves into multiple themes, but the one that stays with me is how Chetna Maroo captures the duality of a discipline or sport – its ability to coax us through crisis, and how it can serve as an avoidance mechanism.

The discipline of choice is incidental. It could be squash, cycling, randonneuring, running, even pickleball (yes, I said it). It’s anything that we take up with some degree of fervor. 

For the young girl Gopi, squash becomes a way to move through her grief. It helps her grow, connects her to the greater world, and helps her find hope.

For her Pa, squash allows him to linger in grief, unable to move into a future without his wife. Western Lane brilliantly shows the benefits and pitfalls of what sport can offer through these characters. 

I have sometimes felt that our society indulges the compulsive side of athletics. This is particularly true of how I have experienced randonneuring, the pursuit that I have been most closely connected to in recent years. And it is certainly admirable to see the kilometers/miles and time on the bike that some riders manage to log. 

However, Western Lane shows that our relationship to these activities can be much more complicated. While we may pile up hours on the squash court or in the countryside, other parts of our lives need tending, too.

Without attention to these areas, we fail to grow or move into the present – into our life’s fullness – and that may adversely affect not only ourselves, but also those we love. Pursuits like randonneuring can be a means to reaching new places of acceptance and insight, and they can also hold us back from the very same.

Western Lane does not set out to judge its characters or the ways that they hold and process their grief. Chetna Maroo simply observes a specific chapter in the lives of Gopi and her family and shares it with us. We root for them to make it through to the other side of their pain, however they get there. I loved it.

Have you read Western Lane? I welcome your thoughts. Are you on Storygraph? If so, connect with me! Also, I’m all ears for your audiobook recommendations!