Les Conquêtes Normandes d’un Tennisman Vieillissant

Description

“Speak in French when you can’t think of the English for a thing—turn out your toes as you walk—and remember who you are!” (The Red Queen,  Alice Through the Looking Glass)

Remember when you were young, and you emulated your sporting heroes in the streets or school playground and were going to win the 100m sprint at the Olympics? The World Cup? Wimbledon? Published in 2021, Confessions of an Ageing Tennis Player tells the story of a man of a certain age – known to himself as “Lord Andrew John Paul George Ringo Murray of Kirkintilloch” – who lived out those fantasies when he was young and never quite moved on as he grew up. Moving seamlessly from sporting zero to hero and back again during Wimbledon in 2013 when Andy Murray was the first British male player to win there in decades, our Lord Andrew is the classic unreliable narrator whose words must never be taken at face value.

By the end of the story, he has succeeded at his final and most demanding quest of being elected Chairman of his local club. So, what’s next for the next generation of tennis champions?  That’s right, it’s the next Grand Slam on the tour and in The Courting Lives of an Ageing Tennis Player, he continues his success by winning the Australian Open in Melbourne amongst much COVID-19 inspired delirium and thwarted love stories.

The third in the “Confessions” series, Les Conquêtes Normandes d’un Tennisman Vieillissant picks up from where The Courting Lives left off and tracks Andy’s inexorable rise to become the greatest GOAT: or Greatest of All Times as they have it in contemporary tennis parlance by challenging for the French Grand Slam at Roland Garros.  But the thwarted love stories continue and take on a darker tone as his fans become more fanatical: ambition, delusion, unrequited love… it’s all here in Les Conquêtes Normandes.