The Last Days of Roger Federer: And Other Endings
GEOFF DYER
(CANONGATE, 304 PP, £20)
Tablet bookshop price £18 • tel 020 7799 4064

Summarising this eccentric, intriguing book is like trying to scoop up globules of mercury. Tennis is the starting point, but there are also meandering disquisitions on music, art, literature and philosophy, plus fragments of autobiography. The key word is “last” – last achievements, last performances, last chances. The “long twilight” of Roger Federer’s career prompts reflections on other heroes’ final chapters, and on 64-year-old Geoff Dyer’s (pictured) own failing body.

He begins by considering early success and overlong careers. Boris Becker and the Second World War fighter pilot Geoffrey Wellum had experienced their finest hours by their early twenties; Bob Dylan ­continues to perform at 81, though his vocal cords are so shot that it is hard to tell which song he’s singing. Wordsworth subtitled “The Prelude” “Growth of a Poet’s Mind”, yet his later tinkering with it is testimony to a mind in decline.