What this book is
Les Conquêtes Normandes d’un Tennisman Vieillissant is the third novel in the Confessions of an Ageing Tennis Playersequence.
Picking up where The Courting Lives of an Ageing Tennis Player left off, the story follows the self-styled Lord Andrew John Paul George Ringo Murray of Kirkintilloch as he sets his sights on the final, most elusive prize in tennis: Roland Garros.
It is a novel about ambition run amok, national mythology, and the seductive belief that history itself is waiting to be corrected — if only the right person turns up at the right moment with a racket, a grievance, and sufficient self-belief.
Why this book exists
The Confessions books have always been interested in the stories people tell themselves in order to keep going.
In Les Conquêtes Normandes, those stories expand outward, from personal fantasy to cultural and historical delusion. The narrator’s obsession is no longer confined to his local club or romantic correspondence, but spills into ideas of nationhood, legacy, conquest, and revenge that stretch back to 1066.
This is a book about:
- the persistence of grievance
- the inflation of personal ambition into destiny
- the dangers of mistaking attention for love
- and the thin line between devotion and fanaticism
The tone darkens here — not because the jokes disappear, but because the stakes do.
The story, briefly
Convinced that an Englishman has never truly won the French Open, Andy arrives at Roland Garros prepared to right a historical wrong.
What follows is a surreal, episodic journey through:
- the French Open and its rituals
- prisons, hospitals, courts, and coastlines
- obsessive letter-writing
- bird-watching ornithologists
- lost plimsolls, stolen rings, and flaming rackets
- and the increasingly fragile emotional ecology surrounding the protagonist
The novel is punctuated by letters from Evelyn Williams (who calls herself “Serena”), whose devotion, care, and concern trace a parallel narrative of unrequited love and quiet persistence — offering a counterpoint to Andy’s grandiose self-mythology.
Form and structure
The book combines:
- prose fiction
- illustrated sequences presented as “sightings”
- letters, transcripts, and reports
- dream-like repetitions and refrains (most notably: « Jouez ! »)
This fragmented structure mirrors the protagonist’s mental state: looping, escalating, and increasingly unable to distinguish performance from reality.
Tone and register
The tone is:
- comic, but edged
- playful, but obsessive
- satirical, but emotionally serious
The humour draws on:
- British sports culture
- Franco-British rivalry
- tennis commentary and etiquette
- institutional absurdity
But beneath the farce sits a study of fixation, and of how love – of sport, of people, of imagined futures – can curdle when it is not reciprocated or grounded.
Who this book tends to find
This novel often resonates with readers who enjoy:
- unreliable narrators
- satire that gradually darkens
- metafiction and self-reference
- British humour with a continental tilt
- stories where comedy and discomfort coexist
It is the most extravagant and outward-facing of the Confessions books — and the least willing to reassure.
A final note
This is a book about conquest — not of courts or titles, but of attention, meaning, and narrative itself.
It asks what happens when someone refuses to stop playing, even after the game has changed.
And whether the call to « Jouez ! » is an invitation — or a warning.
Where to go next
For work, ethics, and institutions → Mess Theory
To begin the story → Confessions of an Ageing Tennis Player
To follow the obsession → The Courting Lives of an Ageing Tennis Player
For parallel concerns → Confessions of the Ageing Swimmers