For a book whose subject is the raw grief of an 11-year-old mourning the death of her mother, Chetna Maroo’s Western Lane is surprisingly unemotional. Its sentences are softly-spoken, its affect mostly flat, its novella length – 161 pages – brisk and contained.  Plot-wise, too, this Booker Prize-longlisted debut is uncomplicated. A Gujarati immigrant family living in 1980s Britain silently struggles to cope with the death of their Ma, with squash filling those holes. The sport, which takes over the world of Gopi and her emotionally suffocated Pa, provides respite and distraction: each day Gopi practises at Western Lane, a sporting centre outside London, losing herself in her serves and becoming drawn to fellow player, 13-year-old Ged.…