OBJECT COACH by Tom Lee

Tell most people that a book is high concept experimental autofiction and they’ll likely break out in hives. It’s understandable. I’ve read a bunch of books that claim to push the boundaries of form and substance, only to find them intellectually aloof to the point of arrogance and, frankly, not half as smart as they think they are. Tom Lee’s Object Coach, however, is the rare exception. A conceptual deep dive into the world of design, creativity and our relationship with the inanimate objects that surround us, it crackles with engaging ideas, sly humour and compelling prose.

Lee is mostly uninterested in plot but somehow still constructs a meta narrative of sorts through the various engagements between his imagined self, his colleagues in the university design faculty, their students and clients. Seemingly disparate fragments - realist, speculative, even sci-fi - coalesce into an unexpectedly profound whole that had me thinking about how I perceive and interact with the world around me. What’s more, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Granted Object Coach isn’t for everyone but it’s about as accessible as this kind of stuff comes.

Object Coach by Tom Lee
Upswell, 2022
129 pages